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CAPE CANAVERAL, April 28 (AP) — A key antenna on a Jupiter spacecraft launched two weeks ago has become stuck, the European Space Agency reported Friday.
According to the space agency, Juice’s 52-foot (16-meter) radar antenna was only a third of the way deployed after liftoff.
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Engineers suspect that a small needle may have protruded. Flight controllers in Germany planned to ignite the spacecraft’s engines, hoping to loosen the pin. If that doesn’t work, they say they have plenty of time to fix the problem.
Juice, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, won’t reach the giant planet until 2031. It takes a circuitous path to get there, including gravity-assisted flybys of Earth, our Moon and Venus.
The radar dishes will need to peer beneath the icy shells of three Jupiter moons suspected of harboring subsurface oceans and possible life, the main goal of the nearly $1.8 billion mission. Its targets include Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
Everything else is going well with the spacecraft, which is about the size of a minibus, the space agency said. Radio antennas, solar panels and a 35-foot (10.6-meter) boom to measure Jupiter’s magnetic field have all been successfully deployed. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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