At 23:15 CEST tonight, 19 August, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will pass just 750 km from the Moon’s surface as part of the first gravity assist in its eight-year journey to Jupiter.

Join us for live images of the Moon and a Q&A with the team

We will be hosting a 30-minute livestream from ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, from 23:30 CEST tonight, 19 August, until around 00:00 CEST on 20 August, during which we will share images of the Moon captured by Juice as it flies past.

Join the livestream on YouTube or on the @ESA_Juice X channel, formerly Twitter, to be among the first to see these images. You will also be able to use the YouTube chat and X comments section (alert us with the hashtag #askESA) to ask questions about Juice to members of the spacecraft’s operations and science teams.

The timeline

Our livestream will begin at 23:30 CEST, shortly after Juice has passed its closest point to the Moon. It is at this time that we start receiving the images captured by Juice.

Just minutes after acquiring images of the Moon, Juice will begin to transmit them down to our ground station in Cebreros, Spain, one of ESA’s three deep space communication stations. From there, the data will be forwarded to ESOC in Germany, where will we share them with you as soon as we have them. The total delay between acquisition in space and appearance on the livestream will be approximately half an hour.

About the images…

The live images from Juice will be captured using the spacecraft’s two ‘monitoring cameras’, which provide 1024 x 1024 pixel, black-and-white snapshots, that can be processed in colour. We have decided to switch the cameras on, instructing them to take images at a rate of roughly two per minute as Juice makes its closest approach to the lunar surface.

These cameras were designed to monitor the unfolding of Juice shortly after launch, as it stretched out its solar panels, antennas and booms in space. They already did their job, helping to confirm successful deployments and troubleshoot issues. Now that Juice is all set for Jupiter, their task is complete!

The decision to photograph the Moon during Juice’s flyby is something of an experiment. We hope that they might be able to capture some nice images, but this is the first time that Juice has passed so close to a big, bright object like a moon or a planet, so we haven’t yet had an opportunity to test or calibrate them to take this kind of image. On top of this, we’re not 100% sure where exactly the cameras are pointing: these images will actually help us check that our understanding of the current camera alignment is correct.

We’ll share the images publicly before we’ve even had a chance to process them at all, so cannot promise any level of quality – but that’s what makes this an exciting experiment, let’s come together to see what happens!

To give an impression, this test image was taken by one of Juice’s monitoring cameras during preparations for the lunar-Earth flyby. The image looks very dark because it was taken using an exposure time that we expect will produce nice images of the Moon, which is much brighter than the parts of the spacecraft seen here.

Even if the images end up resembling those of a 1990s webcam, we will continue to run the Q&A with the Juice team, so if there is anything you want to know about Juice, its lunar-Earth flyby or about Jupiter and its mysterious icy moons, this is your chance to ask!

It’s important to note that these images have nothing to do with flying Juice and are not related to the scientific activities carried out by Juice’s other instruments. But we figured you might like to see them!

Tomorrow, once we’ve had time to process the images from the monitoring cameras, we will share updated versions. Juice’s scientific camera JANUS will also be switched on during the flyby of the Moon, getting its first opportunity to take high-resolution images on a planetary surface in space; we will share these images in the coming days and weeks.

Can’t join us? Give the full Moon a wave tonight!

Can’t join us live but still want to feel part of Juice’s Moon flyby? Well, tonight happens to be a full Moon! The Moon will be big and bright tonight, so, if you’re able to see it at around 23:00 CEST, give it a wave! It’s right there that Europe’s first mission to the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter, will be taking photos, doing important science, and most crucially, being rerouted towards Earth. After passing the Moon, Juice will head towards its home planet for the second half of its historic lunar-Earth flyby on Tuesday night.

A big thank you to the Juice teams who helped make this science communication experiment possible!