Planet Parade

Mercury

After an 8-year journey through the inner Solar System, the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo spacecraft (in collaboration with the Japanese Space Agency) will arrive at the innermost planet in November 2026.  It carries an instrument pioneered and built at Leicester – the imaging X-ray spectrometer (MIXS), using Leicester-designed “lobster-eye optics” to map Mercury’s surface with X-rays.  This will reveal the composition of the surface rocks, and possibly pockets of ices shrouded in the darkness of Mercury’s polar craters.  You can see a model of Leicester’s MIXS instrument at the National Space Centre.

Venus

Although Leicester scientists are not involved in direct missions to our “twin” planet, several of our missions have flown past Venus on their way to other destinations – including BepiColombo on its way to Mercury, and JUICE on its way to Jupiter.  UK scientists have explored Venus in the past with the Venus Express mission (2005-2014), and the European Space Agency will soon be launching EnVision (2031) to study the surface and toxic atmosphere in unprecedented detail. 

Earth

Leicester scientists have a long history of studying the Earth from space.  Our Earth Observation Science team, based at Space Park Leicester, uses satellites to track the health of our planet, from carbon emissions, to pollutants, to understanding how our climate is changing.  Our planetary science team uses a combination of upward-looking radars, and downward-looking satellites, to study how the solar wind interacts with our planet’s magnetic field to produce spectacular auroras – the northern and southern lights.  The SMILE mission (European-Chinese collaboration) will launch in 2026 to explore the Earth’s magnetosphere, carrying Leicester-built hardware.

Mars

Journeys to the Red Planet kickstarted Leicester’s role in planetary exploration, starting with Beagle 2 (2003) which came so close to phoning home (the antenna got blocked when a solar panel failed to deploy).  Since then, Leicester scientists have played key roles in ESA’s Mars Express mission (exploring the Martian ionosphere and magnetic field), NASA’s Curiosity rover (sampling rocks on the surface), and we have instruments ready to launch on ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Rover in 2028.  We even have ambitious plans to study Martian samples returned to Earth in the coming decade – in our special “Astrobiological Containment Facility” at Space Park Leicester.

Jupiter

Leicester scientists use giant telescopes and visiting spacecraft to explore the atmosphere, magnetosphere, and icy moons of the Solar System’s biggest planet.  We are involved in NASA’s Juno mission (in orbit since 2016), and took a leading role in the development of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), currently touring the Solar System on its way to Jupiter.  When it arrives in 2031, it will orbit Jupiter for four years before becoming the first spacecraft in history to orbit an icy moon – Ganymede. At the same time, Leicester scientists are working with a NASA spacecraft called Europa Clipper, aiming to explore Europa’s deep internal ocean in the 2030s.

Saturn

The Cassini spacecraft orbited the ringed planet for 13 years (2004-2017), and delivered a lander (Huygens) to the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan – humanity’s most distant landing to date.  Leicester scientists played a leading role in studying Saturn’s atmosphere and magnetosphere from several instruments, including an infrared spectrometer and magnetometer.  Our role with Cassini paved the way for leadership of ESA’s JUICE mission to Jupiter, and future missions to return to Saturn and land on its icy-ocean moon, Enceladus, in the 2050s.

Uranus

Uranus has only been visited once by a spacecraft – the Voyager 2 flyby in 1986 – and Leicester scientists are leading the development of a future mission to the tilted seventh planet.  Until then, we use ground- and space-based telescopes to explore the planet’s atmosphere and ionosphere.  Leicester provided key technologies for the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and has since used JWST to capture new observations of Uranus to explore its extreme atmosphere and auroral emissions.

Neptune

Neptune was the last planet to be visited by Voyager 2 in 1989, before it headed out of our Solar System on its long journey to the stars.  Although no spacecraft have visited since, Leicester astronomers have studied Neptune from afar.  Leicester provided key technologies for the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and we have used JWST to study Neptune’s rapidly evolving weather patterns and detect its auroral emissions for the first time.  Leicester scientists were involved in plans to return to Neptune, and its moon Triton (a captured object from the Kuiper Belt), sometime in the decades to come.

Sun

Although Leicester is not involved in missions to the Sun, like NASA’s Parker Solar Probe or ESA’s Solar Orbiter, our scientists study how the solar wind (a stream of plasma spiralling outwards across the Solar System) impacts all the planets – from Earth’s spectacular northern and southern lights, to the ionosphere of Mars, and to the auroras of all four giant planets.  Enormous solar flares, prominences, and coronal mass ejections from the Sun make their presence felt at every world, and solar storms can interfere with satellites, telecommunications, and electricity grids here on Earth.