Leicester’s “New Voyager”: €2.5 Million ERC Grant Will Use JWST to Reveal the Secrets of the Giant Planets

Nearly half a century after the Voyager spacecraft transformed our understanding of the Solar System’s outer worlds, a new European research programme aims to continue that legacy using the most powerful space observatory ever built.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded €2.5 million to Professor Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester to lead an ambitious five-year investigation of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The project, titled JWST as the New Voyager: A Chemical Inventory of the Giant Planets, is among the highly competitive ERC Advanced Grants announced this year, with fewer than 10% of proposals receiving funding.

Rather than visiting the planets directly, the programme will exploit JWST’s unprecedented infrared sensitivity to probe the composition and dynamics of the giant planets’ atmospheres, building the most comprehensive chemical inventory ever assembled for these worlds.

A new era for planetary exploration

Although JWST is often associated with distant galaxies and the earliest epochs of the Universe, the telescope has rapidly become one of the most valuable instruments available for planetary science.

Its spectroscopic capabilities allow researchers to identify molecules hidden within planetary atmospheres, offering insights that were impossible to obtain with previous space telescopes. By examining how gases are distributed throughout the atmospheres of the Solar System’s giants, scientists can reconstruct both their present-day meteorology and the conditions under which they formed billions of years ago.

For Professor Fletcher and his team, the goal is to recreate, in scientific terms, the revolutionary impact that Voyager had during its encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune between 1979 and 1989.

Instead of brief flybys, however, JWST enables repeated observations over many years, allowing researchers to monitor seasonal changes, evolving storms and long-term atmospheric circulation.

Understanding the weather on Jupiter

One of the most significant aspects of the project concerns Jupiter, whose atmosphere remains a laboratory for studying planetary weather on a gigantic scale.

The Leicester team plans to combine observations from JWST with data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft and measurements from ground-based observatories around the world. Together, these datasets will help scientists build increasingly accurate models of Jupiter’s atmospheric circulation and cloud dynamics.

The work also has an important practical objective. Fletcher serves as an Interdisciplinary Scientist for the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission, which is currently travelling towards Jupiter and is expected to arrive in 2031.

By the time JUICE reaches the Jovian system, researchers hope to have developed reliable atmospheric forecasts that will help interpret the spacecraft’s future observations.

Interestingly, professional astronomers will not be working alone. The programme continues Leicester’s long-standing collaboration with the amateur astronomy community, whose regular monitoring of Jupiter frequently provides valuable complementary observations between spacecraft campaigns.

Uranus enters a rare season

Alongside the new ERC-funded research, the University of Leicester is already leading another major JWST observing programme focused on Uranus.

The ice giant is approaching its northern summer solstice in 2030, an event that occurs only once every 42 years. Observing the planet throughout this transition offers scientists a rare opportunity to study how seasonal sunlight reshapes its atmosphere over time.

Together, the two programmes promise an unprecedented view of the Solar System’s outer planets during a particularly important period of observation.

Recognition for Leicester’s planetary science

The award also highlights the University of Leicester’s long-standing role in space science.

For decades, the university has contributed instruments, scientific expertise and mission support to numerous international space programmes. The ERC grant reinforces Leicester’s position as one of Europe’s leading centres for planetary research and demonstrates the continued importance of curiosity-driven science within the Horizon Europe framework.

Professor Leigh Fletcher described the funding as an opportunity to unlock “tremendous possibilities for new discoveries,” noting that JWST has already become a cornerstone of planetary exploration only a few years after beginning scientific operations.

Space Park Leicester and the broader UK space ecosystem

Readers of SpaceInfo Club will already be familiar with Space Park Leicester, which has featured in our previous coverage as one of the UK’s most important centres for space innovation, research and industrial collaboration.

While this new ERC project is led by the University of Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy, it further strengthens the city’s growing reputation as a hub for advanced space science. The close relationship between the university, Space Park Leicester and the wider UK space sector continues to create opportunities where academic research, engineering and commercial innovation reinforce one another.

This latest success is another example of how Leicester is becoming an increasingly influential contributor to Europe’s scientific ambitions in space.

Looking beyond Voyager

The comparison with Voyager is more than symbolic.

The Voyager missions provided humanity with our first close-up views of the giant planets. JWST cannot replace those historic flybys, but it offers something equally valuable: the ability to observe these worlds continuously with a level of detail that Voyager could never achieve.

As scientists prepare to integrate JWST observations with Juno, JUICE and Earth-based telescopes, the coming decade may deliver the most complete picture yet of the atmospheres, chemistry and climate of the Solar System’s largest planets.

Nearly fifty years after Voyager began its Grand Tour, the exploration of the outer Solar System is entering a remarkable new chapter.