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Moons are made of ice, but may contain liquid water
The new mission is called Smoothie. this means Jupiter Ise Satellites Explorer. And this is English again for the discovery of icy moons around Jupiter.
The surface of Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa has a thick crust of ice, but there may be liquid water underneath. If so, perhaps life is possible there. Or maybe life was possible there in the past.
The mission also has a Dutch touch. The Technical University (TU) in Delft has built, among other things, an instrument with which the flight control can determine with an accuracy of up to 100 meters where the satellite is flying and at what speed. In this way, the command can learn more about the gravity around Jupiter. The measurement is very accurate, as Jupiter is currently about 890 million kilometers from Earth.
In addition, TU Delft built an instrument that measures the distance from the rover to Jupiter and its moons. This should help map elevation differences on the moons.
Jupiter is the third-ever mission to Jupiter. The American Galileo satellite orbited the planet from 1995 to 2003 and dropped a rover into the atmosphere. Since 2016, Juno, also American, has been conducting research on Jupiter. Seven more probes flew across the planet on their way to their next destination.
