First Photos From ESA's JUICE As It Performed Never-Before-Attempted Gravity Maneuver

Yesterday's Lunar Flyby

The first half of the flyby past the Moon went well, and today the second half will see it fly by Earth.

Juice's onboard monitoring cameras captured raw black-and-white images of the Moon at a resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels.

This kind of double gravity assist using both the Moon and Earth in such close succession had never been performed before.

Juice will first fly by Earth's moon on August 19 at 5:16 pm ET, then zip by Earth nearly 25 hours later at 5:57 pm.

The space agency will provide animated visualizations of the close approach and new images in the coming days.

Juice is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program.

The mission will study Jupiter and its moons, particularly Ganymede, to better understand the formation and evolution of the Solar System.

Juice is scheduled to launch in April 2023 and arrive at Jupiter in July 2031.