For the first time in two decades, the United States has a spacecraft orbiting Jupiter.
Advertisement
After a journey of almost 2 billion miles at a cost of $1.1 billion, it all came down to a crucial 35-minute decent. “I mean, the more you know about the mission, you know just how tricky this was, and to have it be flawless, I really can’t put it into words”, added Diane Brown, NASA’s Juno program executive.
While many Americans were applauding fireworks, others in space labs in California and Colorado were cheering yet another feat in space exploration.
The daring maneuver, which required the spacecraft to fire its rocket engine to slow it down enough to be able to slip into Jupiter’s orbit, was done completely by the spacecraft due to a notable communication lag between Jupiter and Earth. After the successful insertion, Juno turned so its solar cells could once again capture the sun’s energy, allowing it to begin the next piece of its mission.
“We prepared a contingency communications procedure and guess what (rips paper…applause), we don’t need that anymore”, said Juno Project Manager Rick Nybakken.
Scientists believe Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has a subsurface ocean that might harbor life and want to eliminate the chance it might get contaminated with microbes from earth should the probe crash into it.
After 37 orbits around Jupiter, Juno will descend into the planet’s atmosphere on February 20, 2018, where it will burn up. Juno’s success, like that of India’s Mangalyaan or the fly-by mission to Pluto or the first mission to moon, belongs to all of us, to all of humanity. Jupiter has a magnetic field 14 times stronger than Earth’s, and it has a radiation belt that is the equivalent of 100 million X-rays.
The volcanic moon Io is the closest of the four large moons to Jupiter, completing a lap around the planet once every 42 hours. It is hoped the information gathered will give us a better understanding of our solar system. The Juno mission’s total budget is $1.13 billion, NASA says.
Named after Jupiter’s cloud-piercing wife in Roman mythology, Juno is only the second mission created to spend time at Jupiter.
Advertisement
Juno will investigate Jupiter’s atmospheric composition, water content and whether it has a rocky core. The science collection phase is scheduled to begin in October, but Juno’s science team will be collecting data before that, said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, head of the mission’s science.
