Europe’s Juice spacecraft has completed the world’s first lunar-Earth flyby. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer — aka Juice — harnessed the gravity of Earth to sling itself in the direction of Venus. The route will provide a shortcut to Jupiter through the inner Solar System. Juice made it closet approach to the Moon at 23:15 CEST on August 19. Gravitational forces then guided the spacecraft towards a closest approach to Earth at 23:56 CEST the next day. The European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the manoeuvre. By harnessing the gravity of both the Moon and Earth, ESA successfully altered the spacecraft’s speed…
This story continues at The Next Web