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posted by CoolHand on Friday February 05 2016, @11:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the juno-we-post-the-best-stories dept.

NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully executed a maneuver to adjust its flight path [on] Feb. 3. The maneuver refined the spacecraft's trajectory, helping set the stage for Juno's arrival at the solar system's largest planetary inhabitant five months and a day from now.

"This is the first of two trajectory adjustments that fine tune Juno's orbit around the sun, perfecting our rendezvous with Jupiter on July 4th at 8:18 p.m. PDT [11:18 p.m. EDT]," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

The maneuver began at 10:38 a.m. PST (1:38 p.m. EST). ). The Juno spacecraft's thrusters consumed about 1.3 pounds (0.6 kilograms) of fuel during the burn, and changed the spacecraft's speed by 1 foot (0.31 meters), per second. At the time of the maneuver, Juno was about 51 million miles (82 million kilometers) from Jupiter and approximately 425 million miles (684 million kilometers) from Earth. The next trajectory correction maneuver is scheduled for May 31.

Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011. The spacecraft will orbit the Jovian world 33 times, skimming to within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops every 14 days. During the flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its aurorae to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.


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Fastest-Ever Spacecraft to Arrive at Jupiter Tonight [Updated] 15 comments

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...]

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday February 06 2016, @01:12AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday February 06 2016, @01:12AM (#299682) Journal

    It's great to have another orbiter take another good long look at the Jovian system. Doubtless has updated and improved instruments.

    Yet I can't help thinking that there's much more to be learned from sending orbiters to Uranus and Neptune, as we know much less about those worlds.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday February 06 2016, @01:43AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday February 06 2016, @01:43AM (#299690) Journal

      Better yet, we need orbiters using laser communication. That 1 Kbps connection to New Horizons can be greatly improved:

      http://www.kurzweilai.net/nasa-engineers-to-build-first-integrated-photonics-modem [kurzweilai.net]

      LCRD, expected to begin operations in 2019, promises to transform the way NASA sends and receives data, video and other information. It will use lasers to encode and transmit data at rates 10 to 100 times faster than today’s communications equipment, requiring significantly less mass and power.

      Such a leap in technology could deliver video and high-resolution measurements from spacecraft over planets across the solar system — permitting researchers to make detailed studies of conditions on other worlds, much as scientists today track hurricanes and other climate and environmental changes here on Earth.

      A payload aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) demonstrated record-breaking download and upload speeds to and from lunar orbit at 622 megabits per second (Mbps) and 20 Mbps, respectively, in 2013 (see “NASA laser communication system sets record with data transmissions to and from Moon“).

      --
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