NASA's Juno spacecraft has completed its first of 36 close flybys of Jupiter:
NASA's Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter today. The time of closest approach with the gas-giant world was 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.m. EDT, 13:44 UTC) when Juno passed about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. At the time, Juno was traveling at 130,000 mph (208,000 kilometers per hour) with respect to the planet. This flyby was the closest Juno will get to Jupiter during its prime mission. "Early post-flyby telemetry indicates that everything worked as planned and Juno is firing on all cylinders," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
There are 35 more close flybys of Jupiter planned during Juno's mission (scheduled to end in February 2018). The August 27 flyby was the first time Juno had its entire suite of science instruments activated and looking at the giant planet as the spacecraft zoomed past. [...] While results from the spacecraft's suite of instruments will be released down the road, a handful of images from Juno's visible light imager -- JunoCam -- are expected to be released the next couple of weeks. Those images will include the highest-resolution views of the Jovian atmosphere and the first glimpse of Jupiter's north and south poles.
The image at the top of the NASA article and being displayed by other news organizations was taken from around 703,000 kilometers away. The imagery from 4,200 kilometers away should be a lot more interesting.
At closest approach, Juno's speed was so fast that one lap of the earth at the equator would take about 12 minutes, and one lap of Jupiter would require the better part of 4 hours.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Monday August 29 2016, @12:07PM
The problem with these NASA announcements is that they get me all excited about COOL SPACE STUFF but then it turns out it's going to take them something like a month to receive any data that's actually interesting - by which time, I've probably forgotten about.
I guess I should just make some space-news sites part of my daily reading. Anybody got suggestions for where to look? (And not just US-centric; ESA, JAXA, RosKosmos, etc. do good work too.)
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @12:26PM
The problem with these NASA announcements
The problem is only NASA 's, and it is that they are barely convincing anymore.
See them here caught in the act, as they fake Jupiter's 'aurora'. [youtu.be]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @01:52PM
>Comments are disabled for this video.
lol
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @02:02PM
lol
'lol' all you want. Has exactly zero consequence on the truth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @03:36PM
"Composite images" are a lie!
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 29 2016, @01:38PM
http://www.space.com/ [space.com]
http://spacenews.com/ [spacenews.com]
http://www.universetoday.com/ [universetoday.com] (first of these 3 to report on the successful Juno flyby)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/ [sciencedaily.com] (generic science news wire, better at linking to original sites than Phys.org)
Among tech and regular news sites, The Register, Ars Technica, and BBC cover a decent amount, if you're already looking at them.
I don't see a feed that corresponds to what the NASA.gov website has on its front page (like this [nasa.gov]), and the pages load like crap, so whatever.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Monday August 29 2016, @02:15PM
Trying to read Science Daily is kind of like trying to drink from a firehose... which is why, one day, I shut down the VM that my RSS reader was living on and never started it back up...
Also I was looking for something a little more focused and a little more...uh..."user friendly" I guess? Science Daily IIRC was pretty focused on the actual science nitty-gritty rather than being something you could read quickly while still getting a sense of the science without diving into details.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 29 2016, @02:26PM
http://www.universetoday.com/ [universetoday.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 29 2016, @02:07PM
but then, it turns out they use internal combustion engines. Yuk.
From TFA (the friendly article) . . .
Why not operate the spacecraft's driveshaft with an electric motor? Solar or nuclear (noo-ku-lar) powered. Or squirrels.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AndyTheAbsurd on Monday August 29 2016, @02:10PM
Or miniature giant space hamsters?
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:50PM
So regular sized space hamsters?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 29 2016, @02:14PM
It's clear evidence that Juno is fake and all the imagery it returns is fake!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @02:22PM
It's clear evidence that Juno is fake and all the imagery it returns is fake!
Debunk this [youtu.be]then, since you act so cute. Where are your arguments?
You need to also be smart, not just smartass
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 29 2016, @02:43PM
It's a composite image. They overlaid UV imagery on top of an older visible light image of Jupiter.
There is no attempt to hide this fact in the image release:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/24/image/ [hubblesite.org]
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/24/image/a/ [hubblesite.org]
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/24/image/b/ [hubblesite.org]
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/24/image/c/ [hubblesite.org]
A lot of the imagery NASA puts out has false color added or details highlighted for contrast. You'll find plenty more "fakes" than this example if you looked. And you can get the raw data too if you cared.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @03:52PM
Don't bother. You can enlighten ingnorance. You can teach the unfamiliar. But you can't argue with dumbass. Obviously the whole concept of radiation outside the visible band is incomprehensible to him, as is highlighting features of interest.
Raw data is the last thing you want people like these to have. You'll find all sorts of nonsense if you don't understand that you need to apply corrections to raw data. Probably one of those blue skies on Mars Hoagland idiots, or better, the rabbits of Mars [rense.com] morons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:55PM
Ah I get it. The Creature of Kyre Banorg is actually from Mars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:36AM
The full-color disk of Jupiter in this image was separately photographed at a different time
How convenient. Only they forgot to mention this in their original post, back at June 30th.
And you can get the raw data too if you cared.
I don't care. And I cannot. But you do, and you seem to believe that you can. So how about YOU try and get them, and as a collateral become disillusioned about the 'availability of the raw data': deliver the UV picture, the original one, the one that is presumably one of the components of the composite picture. Unless you maintain that Jupiter is invisible in the UV.
I would not be surprised if this information is classified. After all, Ahmed could hijack Juno and blow up Jupiter, or change its orbit and throw it onto some building.
(Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Monday August 29 2016, @03:21PM
AndyTheAbsurd wrote:
I have found NASA's Deep Space Network - Now [nasa.gov] site (javascript required) to be very informative as to what probes NASA is currently in contact with, the data rate, the distance to it, as well as which radio dish(es) are in contact with which probe. If they would only add a link to each probe's web site, it would be a great one-stop source for what is going on in space right now!
The Planetary Society is active in the topic of planetary exploration and I have found Emily Lakdawalla's blog to be am especially great resource: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/ [planetary.org]. Very readable, has tech details if you want, but also presents enough information at a high enough level of presentation to make things palatable for the non-professional enthusiast.
Also, I agree that looking at the entirety of ScienceDaily is like drinking from a firehose... I find it helpful to restrict it to looking at only a subset of the posted articles using this link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/space_time/ [sciencedaily.com] for just space-related news.
Another interesting site I've found is http://spaceflightnow.com/ [spaceflightnow.com] which primarily provides notice of rocket launches but also has some reports from the missions, as well. If you are looking just for the upcoming launch schedule, they have a page dedicated to that: http://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ [spaceflightnow.com] where I just noticed that SpaceX has scheduled another launch:
Hope that helps!
Wit is intellect, dancing.