JUICE Spacecraft Successfully Slingshots Around Venus on Track for Jupiter Orbit

The ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), which launched in April 2023, has completed another successful flyby aimed at boosting its speed ahead of a Jupiter orbital insertion sometime in 2031. This latest flyby saw it come close enough to Venus that it had to turn off many of its instruments and even use the high-gain antenna as a form of heat shield to survive the close proximity gravity assist.
Gravity assist slingshots are one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to get spacecraft to the outer solar system. That’s where the spacecraft leverages the gravitational pull of a body like a moon or planet to accelerate along its trajectory, before flying off towards its eventual destination.
To reach Jupiter without huge expenditure, the JUICE spacecraft has used a number of gravity assists around Earth, the Moon, and now Venus on its long journey. It will perform many more on the next six years of travel, too, for a total of 25 by the time it completes its journey, using a number of assists around Jovian moon, Ganymede, to round out its orbit. The next one is designed to help it get there in the first place, though, and will see JUICE fly by Earth once again—but not until next year.
“JUICE will use the gravity of Venus this week to bend its orbit around the sun and gain speed relative to Earth without using fuel,” ESA explained in its Aug. 25 statement (via Space.com). “JUICE will use the Earth flyby in 2026 to further fine-tune its trajectory.”
Unfortunately, no imaging or scientific observations were made with all of the JUICE spacecraft’s instruments switched off to protect them during the flyby. Those are being saved for JUICE’s eventual mission at Jupiter itself. After its arrival in 2031, JUICE will conduct a tour of Jupiter and 35 flybys of its various moons through 2034. From there, it will orbit around Ganymede for a year, concluding its initial mission in 2035.
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