OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dicit:

Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 5 August 2011 UTC, as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on 5 July 2016 UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. After completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Juno’s mission is to measure Jupiter’s composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds up to 620 km/h (390 mph).

Juno is the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after the nuclear powered Galileo orbiter, which orbited from 1995 to 2003. Unlike all earlier spacecraft sent to the outer planets, Juno is powered by solar arrays, commonly used by satellites orbiting Earth and working in the inner Solar System, whereas radioisotope thermoelectric generators are commonly used for missions to the outer Solar System and beyond. For Juno, however, the three largest solar array wings ever deployed on a planetary probe play an integral role in stabilizing the spacecraft as well as generating power.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS/ULiège/Bonfond

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter has made an unexpected discovery about a different planet – Mars. Juno scientists discovered that Martian dust may be the source of a sky phenomenon known as the zodiacal light.

Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That glow is the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun.

Astronomers have long thought that the dust is brought into the inner solar system by asteroids and comets. But now, a team of Juno scientists argues that the planet Mars may be the source. The discovery resulted from dust particles slamming into the Juno spacecraft during its journey from Earth to Jupiter. Juno’s expansive solar panels unintentionally became the biggest and most sensitive dust detector ever built. Impacts on the solar panels provided important clues to the origin and orbital evolution of the dust, resolving some of the mysterious variations observed in the zodiacal light.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher (USRA): Lead Producer/Michael Lentz (USRA): Lead Animator/Kel Elkins (USRA):Lead Data Visualizer/Lonnie Shekhtman (ADNET): Writer/Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC): Public Affairs Officer/John Connerney (NASA/GSFC): Scientist/David Agle (JPL): Support/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/Original musical score by Vangelis, used with permission.

NASA dicit:

This video uses images from NASA’s Juno mission to recreate what it might have looked like to ride along with the Juno spacecraft as it performed its 27th close flyby of Jupiter on June 2, 2020.

During the closest approach of this pass, the Juno spacecraft came within approximately 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) of Jupiter’s cloud tops. At that point, Jupiter’s powerful gravity accelerated the spacecraft to tremendous speed – about 130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created the video using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam instrument. The sequence combines 41 JunoCam still images digitally projected onto a sphere, with a virtual “camera” providing views of Jupiter from different angles as the spacecraft speeds by.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

NASA dicit:

This animation takes the viewer on a simulated journey into Jupiter’s exotic high-altitude electrical storms. Get an up-close view of Mission Juno’s newly discovered “shallow lighting” flashes and dive into the violent atmospheric jet of the Nautilus cloud. The smallest white “pop-up” clouds on top of the Nautilus are about 100 km across. The ride navigates through Jupiter’s towering thunderstorms, dodging the spray of ammonia-water rain, and shallow lighting flashes. At these altitudes — too cold for pure liquid water to exit – ammonia gas acts like an antifreeze that melts the water ice crystals flung up to these heights by Jupiter’s powerful storms – giving Jupiter an unexpected ammonia-water cloud that can electrify the sky. The animation was created by combining an image of high-altitude clouds from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft with a computer-generated animation.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gil/Animation: Koji Kuramura/Music: Vangelis

Wikipedia dicit:

Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011 (UTC), as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on July 5, 2016 (UTC; July 4 U.S. time), to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. After completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Juno’s mission is to measure Jupiter’s composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds up to 618 kilometers per hour (384 mph).

Juno is the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after the nuclear powered Galileo orbiter, which orbited from 1995 to 2003. Unlike all earlier spacecraft sent to the outer planets, Juno is powered by solar arrays, commonly used by satellites orbiting Earth and working in the inner Solar System, whereas radioisotope thermoelectric generators are commonly used for missions to the outer Solar System and beyond. For Juno, however, the three largest solar array wings ever deployed on a planetary probe play an integral role in stabilizing the spacecraft as well as generating power.

Video credit: NASA

Wikipedia dicit:

The spectrometer mapper JIRAM, operating in the near infrared (between 2 and 5 μm), conducts surveys in the upper layers of the atmosphere to a depth of between 50 and 70 km (31 and 43 mi) where the pressure reaches 5 to 7 bar (73 to 102 psi). JIRAM will provide images of the aurora in the wavelength of 3.4 μm in regions with abundant H3+ ions. By measuring the heat radiated by the atmosphere of Jupiter, JIRAM can determine how clouds with water are flowing beneath the surface. It can also detect methane, water vapor, ammonia and phosphine. It was not required that this device meets the radiation resistance requirements. The JIRAM instrument is expected to operate through the eighth orbit of Jupiter.

Video credit: NASA