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NASA's Juno Mission |OT| Now in orbit around Jupiter - New images released (9/2)

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F

fallout

Member
Here's a detailed timeline of the orbital insertion:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emil...timeline-of-juno-jupiter-orbit-insertion.html

Big things are 1. The burn needs to be at least 20 minutes (35 is ideal) and 2. After the burn, they need to get the spacecraft's solar panels oriented towards the Sun. If they fail on 2, the batteries will die.

jett said:
And I get that scientists don't care much about pretty pictures, but it's what gets people like me interested heh. :p
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People like you are why they added the camera, actually (which I think is awesome, honestly). It doesn't serve any mission science goals. They're even taking votes from the public on which features to take pictures of:

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/voting
 
E

E92 M3

Member
"Hey bro, if you don't align the solar panels properly this multi-year mission will be a failure. No Pressure."
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Hubble took this photo:

77kL4Rb.jpg
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G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Sound recording as Juno passed into Jupiter's magnetic field.

The broadband burst of noise marked "Bow Shock" is the region of turbulence where the supersonic solar wind is heated and slowed by encountering the Jovian magnetosphere. The shock is analogous to a sonic boom generated in Earth's atmosphere by a supersonic aircraft. The region after the shock is called the magnetosheath.
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Man, that thing sounds insane.

Edit:

J96JwvS.jpg
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Jupiter's magnetic field, which is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field, is considered to be the largest structure in our Solar System.
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G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Link.

On July 4, as the main engine on the spacecraft fires, in the control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., there will be nothing to control, and all anyone there will be able to do is wait and watch.

If anything goes wrong, there is no way for anyone to intercede. The radio signals take 48 minutes to travel from Jupiter to Earth. By the time engineers receive word the engine firing has begun, the engine should have already switched off, with the spacecraft in orbit.

If the engine shuts off prematurely, Juno might still end up in orbit, albeit in the wrong orbit. If the engine fails, “we don’t end up in a very exciting spot,” Mr. Nybakken said.

“We haven’t studied that too much in terms of where we end up, because we’re focused on success and not failure.”

In other words, Juno would zip right past Jupiter and end up in a useless orbit around the sun.

Through the evening of July 4, mission control will receive only a series of radio “tones” — three-second bursts at different frequencies — telling the sequence of operations the spacecraft is performing. To point the engine in the correct direction, the main antenna will not be pointed at Earth, preventing more detailed telemetry. The spacecraft will also not send back any photographs or data from the instruments, which will be shut down on Wednesday, five days before its arrival, and will not be turned back on until a couple of days after its arrival. (NASA is holding back a series of photographs taken during the approach that it plans to release as a movie on July 4.)
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Juno also carries a camera for taking the usual kind of photographs, not as part of its prime science mission but as a way to attract public participation. Anyone can sign in to the Southwest Research Institute’s Mission Juno website and suggest where the camera should be pointed and then vote on the choices. (voting link here)

“It’s really a public camera,” Dr. Bolton said. “They can engage in the debate of which things are most important to photograph.”
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Q7zFEKT.jpg


Also on board Juno are three Lego custom minifigures made of spacecraft-grade aluminum. One is Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods. The second is Juno, wife and sister of Jupiter in Roman mythology, and the third is Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer who discovered the four large moons of Jupiter through a telescope he made.
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Even if everything goes better than planned, the mission will not last much beyond the planned 20 months. Despite the titanium armoring, “we know the radiation is going to kill us,” Mr. Beutelschies said.

Juno is expected to receive a radiation dose equivalent to more than 100 million dental X-rays.
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D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
Aw, since the camera will probably die before the mission ends, that means no cool pictures once it dives into the interior of Jupiter. Damn, I've always wanted something to get in there. We'll get some science out of it, which is way more important at least.
 
F

Freeza Under The Shower

Member
Oh neat! I know the one they did with the reconstruction of the moon landing (and particularly the iconic photos of Earthrise, which is kind of a 'how' if you think about it and don't know the answer yet), but I didn't think there would be one for current missions.
 
L

LookAtMeGo

Member
Space is the best. Jupiter is so cool. Some close-ups of that storm happenin in that big red spot would be a wet dream. I'd give my left nut to see a high definition video of a probe entering its atmosphere and attempting to touch down. Oh man, in VR that would be too cool.

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F

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
LookAtMeGo said:
Space is the best. Jupiter is so cool. Some close-ups of that storm happenin in that big red spot would be a wet dream. I'd give my left nut to see a high definition video of a probe entering its atmosphere and attempting to touch down. Oh man, in VR that would be too cool.

Subbed
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On what?
 
F

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
LookAtMeGo said:
On its gaseous surface? Eventually gravity has to create some sort of liquid or metallicy surface I would think.
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I don't know how'd you'd land on a gaseous surface, per say. As for a solid or liquid surface, we're not sure where a solid surface on Jupiter is, if it even has one. As it would descend, the pressure and temperatures would become so intense, though, that as you descended, the hydrogen and helium atmosphere probably goes super-critical (neither exactly gas nor liquid). Eventually you'd reach a layer of metallic hydrogen, which is something so extreme, we've only predicted it theoretically and observed it indirectly or made small, experimental amounts. Some have predicted that not even Jupiter's core is 100% solid. Either way, trying to make a probe that could make it there would be pretty impossible.

We have sent probed into Jupiter before though; the Galileo spacecraft had a small atmospheric reentry probe, but the high winds, pressure (23 times that of Earth at failing), and high temperature (153°C at failing) destroyed them quickly (failed right around an hour of life and would've melted in about 10 hours). And that was after surviving 230g of deceleration and losing more than half of its 152 kg heat shield in reentry. No pictures, though, so there's definitely reason to maybe do it again.
 
Jacknapes

Jacknapes

Member
This is very exciting, forgot about this until the other day. Will certainly be looking more into this, and hopefully some nice pictures will arise.
 
T

Tk0n

Member
from theverge article:

"NASA will receive confirmation that Juno’s engine has started burning at 11:18PM ET on July 4th, and then know if the burn has been successful just before midnight."
 
B

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
That blue aurora on Jupiter looks like it doesn't belong there. It doesn't fit with the overall colors of the planet at all.
 
S

Smokey

Member
FelixOrion said:
I don't know how'd you'd land on a gaseous surface, per say. As for a solid or liquid surface, we're not sure where a solid surface on Jupiter is, if it even has one. As it would descend, the pressure and temperatures would become so intense, though, that as you descended, the hydrogen and helium atmosphere probably goes super-critical (neither exactly gas nor liquid). Eventually you'd reach a layer of metallic hydrogen, which is something so extreme, we've only predicted it theoretically and observed it indirectly or made small, experimental amounts. Some have predicted that not even Jupiter's core is 100% solid. Either way, trying to make a probe that could make it there would be pretty impossible.

We have sent probed into Jupiter before though; the Galileo spacecraft had a small atmospheric reentry probe, but the high winds, pressure (23 times that of Earth at failing), and high temperature (153°C at failing) destroyed them quickly (failed right around an hour of life and would've melted in about 10 hours). And that was after surviving 230g of deceleration and losing more than half of its 152 kg heat shield in reentry. No pictures, though, so there's definitely reason to maybe do it again.
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A brief glimpse of a probe in Jupiter (on it's way to death) I think, would be holy shit amazing.
 
F

fallout

Member
_Ryo_ said:
Sorry for the ignorance but will this craft be able to obtain HD pictures of Jupiter's moons?
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Unfortunately, no. The orbit they're using isn't really designed for it and it's not a science goal of the mission. There will be some pictures of the moons, but they'll be low resolution due to the distance.

Yes, you'll see on perijove 1 they'll be trying for Ganymede. The polar orbit and very wide angle view of the camera mean that moon images will be very low-resolution. The flip side of that is that moon images take very little data volume (because low res and mostly contain black space). So they'll probably snap a couple of moon pictures per orbit, on average, but their quality won't be a lot better than what you can get from Earth.​

Taken from Emily Lakdawalla's reply to a comment here: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/06090600-what-to-expect-from-junocam.html

Spades said:
Excited to see what the next 24 hours brings.
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It's important to note that we won't be getting great images back from Juno until late August.

During JOI, the big news will all be based on non-imagery telemetry.
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
I love Jupiter, but looking at it also freaks me out. That thing pumps out so much radiation that you can't get anywhere near it. It's terrifying to look at it and think that it was possibly a star that failed to coalesce, and instead is just a giant raging ball of failed inferno. I'll be excited to find out what new discoveries they uncover, and of course, for the pictures that come later.
 
E

E92 M3

Member
So exciting - some amazing minds have designed this mission. Difficult to comprehend the complexity of everything.

Truly something.
 
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