“On 12 May RIME was finally jolted into life when the flight control team fired a mechanical device called a ‘non-explosive actuator’ (NEA), located in the jammed bracket. This delivered a shock that moved the pin by a matter of millimetres and allowed the antenna to unfold.”
A pin stuck by millimetres held Juice’s 16-metre radar antenna folded for more than three weeks. Controllers in Darmstadt shook the spacecraft with thrusters and baked it in sunlight before firing actuators did the job. RIME is the instrument meant to see 9 km under the ice of Jupiter’s moons. After every clever idea, the fix was the oldest one in engineering. Hit it.