At PRECISELY 8:53 pm Pacific Standard Time on July 4, 2016, Happy Independence Day, NASA
piloted the Juno spacecraft into Jupiter’s orbit after traveling 1.7 billion miles over
the last 5 years!
And boy are it’s arms tired.
Hi there, Jules here for DNews and we have an awesome update for you: There is now a
spacecraft orbiting Jupiter!
Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by an Atlas 5 rocket on August
5, 2011 and sent on its way to answer one very basic question: How did Jupiter form?
This question holds a LOT of promise and its answer could even help explain the finer details
about how the Earth came to be and how life took hold.
But more on that later.
So, we wanted to get Juno to Jupiter, but at the time of launch, no rocket ship had
nearly enough force to send anything 365 million miles, which is the shortest possible distance
between Earth and Jupiter.
To solve this problem, instead of using a super powerful rocket that we didn’t have,
mission scientists at NASA used…
well, the Earth.
2 years after it was launched, Juno came BACK to Earth on an elongated orbit around the
sun.
When it came within reach of our planet again, the spacecraft used Earth’s gravity to carry
out a “gravitational slingshot” maneuver.
Yea, the Earth literally slingshotted Juno toward Jupiter, and gave it a speed boost
of more than 8,800 miles per hour.
And it has been picking up speed.
Over the last few weeks Juno’s has hit 165,000 mph relative to Earth, making it the single
fastest human-made object ever.
But to be fair, that’s kind of cheating, because all that speed is thanks to Jupiter’s
overwhelming gravitational pull, which is about 2 and a half times Earth's’ gravity.
But with great speed comes great responsibility.
Going that fast is nice right up until you have to slow down.
At that speed, Juno would’ve completely missed Jupiter and that would’ve been a
huge bummer.
So to get it down to orbital speed, there needed to be a super powerful rocket burn
to slow the spacecraft down.
Fortunately, the orbital burn went perfectly and Juno is now in its new, highly radioactive
home.
Emphasis on highly radioactive.
Jupiter’s orbit is one of the harshest place a spacecraft can be in the entire solar system.
On Earth, we’re exposed to roughly 1/3rd of a rad of radiation.
Over the course of Juno’s primary mission of 20 months, the craft will be exposed to
20 MILLION rad -- and while that probably won’t turn Juno into a member of the Fantastic
Four, it does create a serious hazard for the sensitive onboard electronics.
To be honest, there are a lot of unknowns, and a lot of things that can go very very
wrong.
No mission has ever come this close to study the gas giant, the 1997 Galileo spacecraft
was the first to orbit Jupiter, but Juno will get to monitor it even closer, coming within
3,100 miles of the planet’s cloud tops during its 14-day orbit.
But even tho it’s already there, Juno’s mission will officially start in October 2016
when it will give Jupiter a full diagnostic to figure out what’s going on beneath those
toxic space clouds.
It will study Jupiter’s magnetic and gravitational fields to understand how the gas giant generates
its hugely powerful magnetosphere and understand what the planet’s core is made of, because
we pretty much have no idea.
Juno will also set out to examine the distribution of water in the atmosphere in the hope of
perhaps, piecing together the role water may have played in the formation of Jupiter.
And this is the core of Juno’s exploration: to reveal how Jupiter and, by extension, other
planets like Earth, formed.
By studying Jupiter’s atmosphere we can gain more clues about how life could’ve
flourished early in the solar system’s history.
Juno could give us an unprecedented look at the past, and might finally solve some of
universe’s greatest mysteries.
Juno isn't the only recent space news.
We also found gravitational waves...AGAIN!
If that sounds confusing, check out Ian’s video
What are you most excited for Juno to discover?
Let us know in the comments down below and don’t forget to subscribe to DNews!