After a five year journey from Earth, Juno the solar-powered
spacecraft squeezed through a narrow band, skimming Jupiter’s surface,
avoiding the worst of both its radiation belt and its dangerous dust
rings.
It fired its main engine, slowing its velocity, and allowing it to get captured into Jupiter’s hefty orbit.
After it was complete, jubilant scientists fronted a press
conference, and tore up a “contingency communication strategy” they said
they prepared in case things went wrong.
“To know we can go to bed tonight not worrying about what is going to
happen tomorrow, is just amazing,” said Diane Brown, a project manager
from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Scott Bolton, principle investigator of the Juno mission told his
colleagues: “You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing
Nasa has ever done.”
Now the spacecraft will orbit the planet once every 53 days until
October 14, when it will shift to a tighter 14-day orbit. And after
about 20 months of learning everything it can about Jupiter’s interior
and its atmosphere, it will eventually succumb to the harsh environment
and plunge into the planet’s crushing centre.
But right now all that is ahead of us. We watch wide-eyed, eager to
learn about the giant planet, and in doing so, learn more about how we
all got here.
To find out more, you can check out the article below, or scroll
through the rest of this liveblog to see the action, as it happened.
What the Juno mission will look like
The Juno mission will cost Nasa $1.1billion.
After an epic five year journey, where it slung-shot around the Earth
to gather speed and travelled for 2.8bn kilometres, it will now circle
Jupiter for 20 months, before plunging to a crushing death in Jupiter’s harsh and dense atmosphere.
Any reports we get from Juno actually happened 48 minutes and 19
seconds earlier – that’s how long it takes light to get from Juno to
Earth. As a result, it gets sent directions ahead of time, and is flown
essentially on auto-pilot.
Despite Juno’s sensitive electronics being encased in a one-inch
thick solid titanium box to shield it from the intense radiation around
Jupiter, eventually it will succumb to the harsh environment. At that
time – currently estimated to be in about 20 months – it will be
commanded to dive into the atmosphere.
But in that time, it will use it’s nine instruments to learn everything it can about Jupiter’s interior and atmosphere.
It will map Jupiter’s gravity and magnetic fields and track how much
water is in the atmosphere. Its colour camera dubbed JunoCam will snap
close-ups of Jupiter’s swirling clouds, polar regions and shimmering
southern and northern lights.
What the Juno mission will look like
The Juno mission will cost Nasa $1.1billion.
After an epic five year journey, where it slung-shot around the Earth
to gather speed and travelled for 2.8bn kilometres, it will now circle
Jupiter for 20 months, before plunging to a crushing death in Jupiter’s harsh and dense atmosphere.
Any reports we get from Juno actually happened 48 minutes and 19
seconds earlier – that’s how long it takes light to get from Juno to
Earth. As a result, it gets sent directions ahead of time, and is flown
essentially on auto-pilot.
Despite Juno’s sensitive electronics being encased in a one-inch
thick solid titanium box to shield it from the intense radiation around
Jupiter, eventually it will succumb to the harsh environment. At that
time – currently estimated to be in about 20 months – it will be
commanded to dive into the atmosphere.
But in that time, it will use it’s nine instruments to learn everything it can about Jupiter’s interior and atmosphere.
It will map Jupiter’s gravity and magnetic fields and track how much
water is in the atmosphere. Its colour camera dubbed JunoCam will snap
close-ups of Jupiter’s swirling clouds, polar regions and shimmering
southern and northern lights.
Juno
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