When NASA's Juno mission arrives at Jupiter on July 4, 2016, new views of the giant planet's swirling clouds will be sent back to Earth, courtesy of its color camera, called JunoCam. But unlike previous space missions, professional scientists will not be the ones producing the processed views, or even choosing which images to capture. Instead, the public will act as a virtual imaging team, participating in key steps of the process, from identifying features of interest to sharing the finished images online.
"This is really the public's camera. We are hoping students and whole classrooms will get involved and join our team," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
The Juno team has kicked off the first stage of JunoCam activity with the launch of a new Web platform on the mission's website. Now and throughout the mission, amateur astronomers are invited to submit images of Jupiter from their own telescopes. These views will be the basis for online discussions about which of Jupiter's swirls, bands and spots JunoCam should image as it makes repeated, close passes over the planet. The ground-based views will be essential for identifying and tracking changes in the planet's cloud features as Juno approaches.
"In between our close Jupiter flybys, Juno goes far from the planet, and Jupiter will shrink in JunoCam's field of view to a size too small to be useful for choosing which features to capture. So we really are counting on having help from ground-based observers," said Candy Hansen, a member of the Juno science team who leads planning for the camera.
[More after the break.]
Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any previous orbiting spacecraft, giving JunoCam the best close-up views yet of the planet's colorful cloud bands. Every 14 days, the spinning, solar-powered spacecraft will dive past the planet in just a couple of hours, gathering huge amounts of science data, plus about a dozen JunoCam images. At closest approach, Juno will snap photos from only 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above Jupiter's clouds.
"JunoCam will capture high-resolution color views of Jupiter's bands, but that's only part of the story," said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We'll also be treated to the first-ever views of Jupiter's north and south poles, which have never been imaged before."
Unlike most spacecraft cameras, JunoCam was specially designed to work on a spinning spacecraft. Typically, spacecraft must point very precisely at their subjects while taking a picture to avoid smearing their images. Since Juno rotates twice per minute, the Juno team designed a camera that images several lines of pixels at a time, at the right speed to cancel out the rotation and avoid smear.
Previously, the best images of Jupiter were taken by NASA's two Voyager spacecraft, which flew past the planet in 1979. JunoCam's field of view is much wider than that of Voyager's narrow-angle camera. This means every JunoCam image is a kind of panorama, and its highest-resolution images will show wide swaths of clouds. The camera also benefits from decades of technology advancement, making it lighter, less power-hungry and lower in cost.
After JunoCam data arrive on Earth, members of the public will process the images to create color pictures. The Juno team successfully tested this approach when JunoCam acquired its first high-resolution views, showing our home planet during the spacecraft's Earth flyby in October 2013.
Related Stories
Soylent News has carried articles about Juno, the NASA spacecraft headed for a rendezvous with Jupiter on July 4. Here, here, here, and here. Among all the cool stuff about this, "as Juno nears Jupiter tonight, the giant planet's powerful gravity will accelerate the spacecraft to an estimated top speed of about 165,000 mph (265,000 km/h) relative to Earth, mission team members said."
From Space.com,
"I don't think we've had any human[-made] object that's moved that fast, that's left the Earth," Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said during a news conference last week. [Juno's Plunge Into Jupiter Orbit Fraught With Danger (Video)]
The all-time speed record is currently held by NASA's Helios 1 and Helios 2 spacecraft, which launched in the mid-1970s to study the sun. Both probes reached top speeds of about 157,000 mph (253,000 km/h) at their points of closest approach to Earth's star.
For perspective: Bullets cut through the air at about 1,700 mph (2,735 km/h), and the International Space Station zooms around Earth at 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h).
Indeed, Juno will be moving a bit too fast for its own good tonight. To slow down enough to be captured into Jupiter orbit, the probe must slam on the brakes, which it will do by firing its main engine for 35 minutes, beginning at 11:18 p.m. EDT (0318 GMT) tonight.
Bolton said he's nervous about this make-or-break maneuver, which Juno will perform on autopilot.
"If that doesn't all go just right, we fly past Jupiter," Bolton said. "Everything's riding on it."
[...] If all goes according to plan tonight, Juno will enter into a 53.5-day orbit around Jupiter. The probe's handlers will then commission the probe's instruments and use them to study the giant planet over the next few months.
Another way to look at this is a trip from Earth to the Moon at that speed would take only about 90 minutes. Reports are that NASA will live stream this on nasa.gov and Youtube.
[Continues...]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:06AM
The problem with cameras approaching Jupiter is that the closer you get the more the shot looks out of focus.
We are studying swirling gas, and that isn't even understood well here on earth, let alone on a planetary scale.
We really need to send a flying contraption that can seek out its own comfort zone, heat, pressure, atmospheric density, etc and take excursions deeper and shallower, while remaining on station as long as possible and measuring as many things as they can dream up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday December 09 2015, @02:12AM
Sounds like the first time I sent my oblong space probe up my girlfriend's ass.
It did always look like The Great Red Spot. [telegraph.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 09 2015, @07:25PM
This is your boss:
Gobble Gobble, get back to work!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @04:14AM
Wikipedia states: "However, the [planet's] radiation is so destructive that the instruments JunoCam and Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) are expected to last only through the eighth orbit."
How did Galileo keep its camera functional for so long? Did it use safer orbits? (Due to an antenna problem, Galileo couldn't send a lot of pics.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_%28spacecraft%29 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @07:32AM
I figure it comes closer to Jupiter than Galileo, but the article says: "In comparison, Juno will receive much lower levels of radiation than the Galileo orbiter at its equatorial orbit."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 09 2015, @09:06AM
I can't wait to see a hires picture of an impact crater (any impact crater, I'm not fussy) on Jupiter...
Seriously, I can’t wait that long
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @07:59PM
Full PR mode! The NASA version of those early web cams that pointed out the window to look at cows or something. Looking forward to the Facebook interface and the ability to directly post the pictures on Snapchat (or whatever the hell is the image flavor of the month on the Internet).
Go science!
Next up: Saturncam, brought to you by McDonalds. Buy an Extra Value Meal and get to pick the next shot!