The Making of Juice’ series takes the viewer behind the scenes of the European space industry, space technology and planetary science communities around ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission.

Episode 9 includes footage from the occasion of the application of the Galileo plaque onto the spacecraft at Airbus, Toulouse facilities on 20 January 2023. The episode dives into the history of Galileo’s seminal observations of Jupiter and the discovery of its large moons – the inspiration behind the Juice mission. It presents Galileo’s original drawings, together with the process of how the inscriptions were lasered into a piece of multi-layered insulation that is now attached to the spacecraft.

Interviewees featured in this episode are (in order of appearance): Giuseppe Sarri, ESA’s Juice project manager; Luciano Iess, principal investigator of the 3GM experiment on board Juice; Angelo Antonelli, director of the Astronomical Observatory of Rome and Copernican Astronomical Museum; Sophie Weixler, Airbus Laser facility; and Cyril Cavel, Airbus Juice project manager.

This episode is part of a film project that will result in a one-hour documentary film to be released before the launch of Juice. It is produced for ESA by Lightcurve Films.

Access the other episodes of 'The Making of Juice