There was great excitement at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, IRF, in Kiruna ahead of the rocket launch in South America on Friday. After Thursday's cancelled launch, the 55-meter-high rocket finally entered space.
After half an hour of flight, the launcher was separated from the probe itself, which is about to embark on a 778 million kilometre journey to the giant planet Jupiter.
The probe, in turn, contains instruments, some of which have taken 18 years to develop. No wonder, then, if there was an outlet for many different emotions when researchers, project managers and technicians at the institute could see that everything seemed to be going according to plan at the launch.
–Finally! It has been a lot of work and now we are on our way, says Gabriella Stenberg Wieser, space physicist at IRF in Kiruna.
Reach three moons of Jupiter
The instrument from IRF in Kiruna is a particle meter and it has been both developed and manufactured in house. The mission is to reach three of Jupiter's 92 moons and investigate what is believed to be the ocean beneath the thick ice sheet.
If there is water, there are opportunities for life. The hope is to find something that at least resembles amino acids.
At the launch of the probe, there was nervousness:
"You wonder if there is a technical error that is going to happen – and when it lifts slowly and nicely – then you get a little happy," says Gabriella Stenberg Wieser.
But it will take some time before the measurement results can begin to be read. The journey to Jupiter alone takes eight years.
In the clip, you can see when the rocket was launched and the reactions that came after.