JUNO PROBE REACHES JUPITER
by Hazed
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has made it to Jupiter and is now in orbit around the gas giant.
Its journey has taken five years, and as it approached the planet it had to fire its rockets to slow its approach so that it could get caught by the planet’s gravity. Once this was completed it sent back a series of tones which confirmed its braking manoeuvre had gone as planned. Mission control in the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, broke out into cheers when the tones were received.
It’s no surprise that they were elated because the approach to Jupiter was no sure thing. The planet’s radiation belt can be deadly to electronics. But Juno was built to cope with it: it has titanium shielding and is built like a tank.
In order to get to Jupiter, Juno had to achieve a phenomenally high speed: 208,400 km/hour, which is fast enough to get from New York to Tokyo in about 3 mins – or from the Earth to the Moon in 2 hours. See the second link for a graphic which illustrates just how fast that is.
Juno is going to use its sensors to examine the planet’s deep interior. Scientists think that the structure and chemistry of its insides will help explain how Jupiter formed about four and a half billion years ago.
On its approach to Jupiter, Juno filmed the planet and the third link below has a time-lapse video of the four largest moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto*) orbiting the gas giant.
* Shame that NASA, along with everyone else, continues to misspell the moon that we know as Castillo…
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36710768
https://supernovacondensate.net/2016/07/05/ludicrous-speed/
http://gizmodo.com/juno-had-a-glorious-view-during-its-final-approach-of-j-1783114965
