The probe separated from the launch rocket, as planned, 27 minutes after liftoff, at 12:14 GMT, at an altitude of about 1,500 kilometers.
Ariane 5 mission “is a success”declared Stéphane Israël, president of Arianespace.
Thus began an eight-year odyssey for Juice, the name from the English acronym for Explorer of the Icy Moons of Jupiter, the lighthouse mission of the European Space Agency (ESA).
On Thursday, when the launch was originally planned, the space center teams decided to interrupt takeoff operations due to the risk of lightning, a few minutes before the final countdown.
Contrary to classic launches that have a certain margin to take off, the launch window of the Juice probe is barely one second due to the particular orbit it must reach.
“It is the most complex probe ever sent to Jupiter,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher in the Jupiter control room at the Guyana Space Center.
“It is an extraordinary mission that shows everything that Europe is capable of,” said Philippe Baptiste, president of the French National Center for Space Studies.
In Jupiter’s satellites, the probe will search for environments conducive to the appearance of extraterrestrial life forms. It will not reach its destination until 2031, more than 620 million kilometers from Earth, at the end of a hectic journey.