Thales Alenia Space recently delivered the protoflight model (PFM) of Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) that will explore Jupiter’s icy moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto onboard the ESA’s JUICE mission. These are the final units of the instrument that now will be integrated inside the JUICE spacecraft to complete a long set of tests to ensure that every part is working nominally and, finally, being ready for the launch scheduled on June 2022.

RSLab has a leading role in this mission. Lorenzo Bruzzone is the RIME Principal Investigator while Francesca Bovolo is the instrument manager.

“Many theories have been proposed on the subsurface structure of Jupiter’s icy moons since their discovery by Galileo, theories that have sparked the imagination of so many scientists”, said Lorenzo Bruzzone. “This is a first step in the direction of advancing our scientific understanding of the Jupiter moons. For the first time, we may be able to solve some mysteries and take a look under the surface, searching for water”.

The JUICE spacecraft (right) and part of the RIME team together the EQM units of the instrument (left).

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