JUICE will attempt an untested gravitational assist
JUICE will reach Jupiter in 2031 following an eight-year journey, but to get there it’ll need to receive four gravity boosts from Earth and Venus. Excitingly, the spacecraft’s flyby of the Earth-Moon system, a maneuver known as a Lunar-Earth gravity assist (LEGA), has never been attempted before. As ESA explains, JUICE will first get a gravitational assist from the Moon and then a second from Earth some 1.5 days later, in a maneuver meant to “save a significant amount of propellant.”
