Tension was high at the Institute for Space Physics, IRF, in Kiruna ahead of the rocket launch in South America on Friday. After Thursday’s canceled launch, the 55-meter-tall rocket finally made it into space.
After half an hour’s flight, the launch vehicle was separated from the probe itself, which will embark on a 778 million kilometer journey to the giant planet Jupiter.
The probe in turn contains instruments, some of which have taken 18 years to develop. No wonder, then, that there was an outlet for many different emotions when researchers, project managers and technicians at the institute could see that everything seemed to be going according to plan at the launch.
– Finally! It has been a lot of work and now we are on our way, says Gabriella Stenberg Wieser, space physicist at IRF in Kiruna.
Reach three of Jupiter’s moons
The instrument from IRF in Kiruna is a particle meter and it has been both developed and manufactured in-house. The mission is to reach three of Jupiter’s 92 moons and examine what is believed to be ocean beneath the thick ice cover.
If there is water, there are possibilities for life. The hope is to find something that at least resembles amino acids.
At the launch of the probe, it was nervous:
– You wonder if there is some technical error that will happen – and when it takes off slowly and nicely – then you get a little happy, says Gabriella Stenberg Wieser.
But it will take some time before the measurement results can begin to be read. The trip to Jupiter alone takes eight years.
In the clip you see when the rocket is launched and the reactions that followed.
