The JUICE (Jupiter Ice) spacecraft, which was launched to Jupiter in April this year by the European Space Agency, bears the names of the Israelis who took part in one of the spacecraft's scientific experiments, the Israel Space Agency has learned. Prof. Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute, who is in charge of the experiment, and Rony Mann of AccuBeat, who is the director of the atomic clock development project that made the experiment possible, are part of an elite list of key people who made the JUICE mission possible. Their names were printed on the thermal shield on the visible exterior of the spacecraft, which will make 35 fly-pasts (i.e., pass nearby) around the moons of the planet Jupiter and at the end of the mission will crash on the surface of the largest of them (and the largest of the solar system's moons), Ganymede.
The announcement of the mention of the names of the people who took part in the JUICE mission surprised them as well, when it was received yesterday from the mission director Giuseppe Sarri of the European Space Agency. "As you know," Sarri wrote in an e-mail letter, "as a tribute to Galileo Galilei (the discoverer of Jupiter’s large moons, B.H.), we have engraved on a thermal insulation plate three pages of his work Sidereus Nuncius (“Stellar Messenger” B.H.). And we have attached it to the visible exterior of the spacecraft. Without being so arrogant as to compare ourselves to the genius Galileo, we decided to add and engrave on another plaque, below Galileo's, the names of the 210 key people who made the JUICE mission possible... Your name is now flying to Jupiter and in the end, is going to crash on Ganymede."
Continuing the Journey to Jupiter
The JUICE mission, which was launched aboard Ariane 5, continues a 900-million-kilometer journey to the planet Jupiter and will orbit its moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto for four years, in the largest and most prestigious mission in the history of the European Agency to date. The mission includes 12 different scientific experiments designed to examine, among other things, the existence and characterization of the subsurface oceans on Jupiter's moons and whether they meet the conditions required for life.
The Israel Space Agency (ISA), in the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, has partnered with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to carry out groundbreaking scientific experiments as part of the JUICE mission. As part of this project, the agency is funding the development and production of the USO instrument, which is, in practice, a very accurate clock manufactured by AccuBeat, for a scientific experiment led by Prof. Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute of Science, who was appointed as the principal researcher of the hydrodynamics of the atmosphere on the mission, using the USO device.
"We were surprised to discover that our names are making their way to Jupiter," Prof. Yohai Kaspi told the Israel Space Agency. "This is, of course, a symbolic gesture, but we are proud to be included in it, as well as to represent the researchers and engineers who worked with us on this wonderful project."