ESA's Juice Confirms Earth Is Habitable as It Prepares for Jupiter Mission

The European Space Agency's spacecraft Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), en route to explore Jupiter and its moons, has confirmed that Earth is indeed habitable. During a recent flyby of our planet on August 20, Juice used its instruments to measure Earth's atmosphere, verifying that the key elements and conditions for life exist.

Juice's two primary instruments, the Moons and Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer (MAJIS) and the Submillimeter Wave Instrument (SWI), detected vital components such as oxygen, water, ozone, and the "CHNOPS" elements—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. These elements are the building blocks of life as we know it.

While the results were unsurprising, as Earth is known to support life, the flyby allowed scientists to test and calibrate the instruments. This ensures that Juice will be ready to search for potential life-supporting environments when it reaches Jupiter's moons, including Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, which are believed to harbor hidden oceans beneath their icy surfaces.

Juice is expected to reach Jupiter by 2031, where it will explore the gas giant and its moons in search of signs of life.