One-Week Countdown Begins for Juno Mission's Daring Arrival at Jupiter

[Eugene]

Source: Space.com

One-Week Countdown Begins for Juno Mission's Daring Arrival at Jupiter

By Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer | June 27, 2016 06:53am ET

NASA's Juno probe is only one week away from its arrival at Jupiter, where it will execute a daring maneuver in order to get closer to the giant planet than any other spacecraft in history.

Getting up-close and personal with Jupiter is a serious challenge for space probes, because the Jovian giant is surrounded by a belt of very intense radiation that can quickly fry most spacecraft electronics. So rather than orbiting the planet, Juno will make a series of 37 loops between Jupiter and the radiation ring.

On July 4, Juno's engines will burn for about 35 minutes to slow down the probe so it can enter into its loopy orbit in the Jupiter system. But if the maneuver doesn't go as planned, Juno could fly right past Jupiter, putting an end to the $1.1 billion mission.

The primary science objective of the Juno mission is to collect information about Jupiter's interior, which will provide clues about how the planet formed. That, in turn, could provide information about the history of the entire solar system, and about the formation history of other solar systems in the universe.

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Read more: http://www.space.com/33275-one-week-juno-arrives-at-jupiter.html

[longship]

1. Mars Curiousity's 7 minutes of terror was nothing compared to this.

The delay between Jupiter and Earth is some 48 minutes, no time for correction for a burn that is scheduled for 40-some minutes and absolutely has to go over 20 minutes to be even partially recoverable.

That's some serious terror there!

And don't get me started about Jupiter's horrendous magnetic fields and their resulting radiation, both hideously dangerous to spacecraft.

Nail biting time!