The European Space Agency (ESA) will be launching a satellite on Thursday to study Jupiter and three of its largest moons, using science and technology ‘made in Portugal’. Portuguese Bruno Sousa will be the project’s flight operations director. The launch, from ESA’s space base in Kourou, French Guiana – where Portugal will be represented by president of space agency Portugal Space, Ricardo Conde – will take place at 13:15 (Lisbon time) aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket. The mission is costing around €1.6 billion and is a collaboration of the US (NASA), Japanese (JAXA) and Israeli (ISA) space agencies in terms of instrumentation and hardware. It is expected to last until 2035, with the first scientific data released in 2032
