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Author Topic: Juno probe successfully enters into orbit around Jupiter  (Read 1282 times)

Offline A51Watcher

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Juno probe successfully enters into orbit around Jupiter
« on: July 05, 2016, 03:06:46 pm »
Last night's 35 min. carefully timed successful burn (while incommunicado) brought the Juno probe into it's planned elliptical orbit.

[youtube]2Fgj2ljsmWs[/youtube]




No adjustments could have brought it back if it's automated procedure had malfunctioned, it would have continued on into oblivion.


In the last several weeks Hubble has been imaging Jupiter -



"Using a series of far-ultraviolet images from Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, it is possible for scientists to follow the movement of Jupiter’s vivid aurorae, which cover areas bigger than the Earth.

Not only are the aurorae huge in size, they are also hundreds of times more energetic than aurorae on Earth. And, unlike those on Earth, they never cease. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester). Acknowledgment: A. Simon (NASA/GSFC) and the OPAL team."


[youtube]dplSgv6qlMk[/youtube]



Apparently these largest in the solar system magnetic poles are not only responsible for these monstrous aurora (which remain steady and do not diminish) but the incredibly high amounts of radiation emanating from the planet as well.

While most science instruments are packed inside a titanium box to protect against this, the imaging camera itself is not, and mission team expects it to die sometime during 2016 due to the high rad levels, during it's projected 2018 mission completion date. 

Live Telemetry stats atm here -


[youtube]0Uayu5LvdTk[/youtube]




Information posted pre- burn on Space.com stated "Juno will perform the burn on autopilot; it currently takes light 48 minutes to get from Earth to Jupiter, so there's no way to command such a maneuver in anything close to real time.

But Juno, which launched in August 2011, won't be in the clear even if the engine burn goes well. The solar-powered probe will be pointed away from the sun during this maneuver, and it must re-orient itself quickly in the aftermath.

An image captured by the Very Large Telescope shows the radiation "donut" that surrounds Jupiter. The yellow spot on the right is where the radiation is most intense.

The Juno probe will fly between the planet and the radiation hot spots.

An image captured by the Very Large Telescope shows the radiation "donut" that surrounds Jupiter.

The yellow spot on the right is where the radiation is most intense. The Juno probe will fly between the planet and the radiation hot spots.


"The whole game is, get back to the sun before you run out of battery," said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

"We've got to get blood flowing through Juno's veins again."

If all goes according to plan, Juno should begin pointing back toward the sun at 12:07 a.m. EDT (0407 GMT), mission officials said.

The successful execution of such maneuvers is never guaranteed, and the extreme conditions at Jupiter will add a few extra layers of difficulty for Juno tonight.

For example, the radiation environment around the giant planet is the harshest and most intense in the solar system. Juno will have to withstand swarms of potentially damaging electrons accelerated to nearly the speed of light by Jupiter's magnetic field, which is 20,000 times more powerful than that of Earth.

"The minute they hit that spacecraft, they will ricochet and create shrapnel of photons and other particles, which will then scatter," said Heidi Becker of JPL, leader of Juno’s radiation-monitoring team. "And that's what gets in and degrades the electronics."

Juno's core electronics are protected by a 400-lb. (180 kilograms) titanium vault, which should keep them safe. But the team isn't taking anything for granted; the spacecraft will fly through the harshest part of Jupiter's radiation belts just as the engine is firing up for the orbital-insertion burn, Becker said.

Indeed, Juno will be exposed to the equivalent of 1 million dental X rays just during the orbital-insertion maneuver tonight, she added.

"So, think about Juno tonight," Becker said. "And send a big wish, too."

Jupiter is also girded by a dusty ring of debris. This structure isn't nearly as large or well-defined as Saturn's famous ring system, but it does harbor particles that could potentially harm Juno, especially considering how fast the probe will be moving tonight. (Jupiter's gravity will accelerate the spacecraft to a top speed of about 165,000 mph, or 265,000 km/h, around the time of the engine burn — faster than any human-made object has ever traveled, mission team members have said.)"

http://www.space.com/33340-juno-jupiter-arrival-tonight-risks.html




« Last Edit: July 05, 2016, 04:39:30 pm by A51Watcher »

 


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