The Juno spacecraft will be launched in 2011 and will reach Jupiter in 2016. It will carry advanced equipment for studying the clouds and moons of Jupiter
NASA has officially begun to advance preparations for an unprecedented and deep mission to explore Jupiter.
The mission, known as Juno, will be the first in which a spacecraft in a polar elliptical orbit will attack the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure. Far below the layer of dense clouds, Jupiter guards secrets about the basic processes and conditions that prevailed in the early days of the solar system.
"Jupiter is like a prototype of the giant planets in our solar system that formed early and captured most of the material left after the formation of the Sun," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Center in San Antonio. "Unlike Earth, Jupiter's enormous mass has allowed it to maintain its original composition, and provides us with a way to follow the history of our solar system."
The spacecraft will be launched according to the current plan, on top of an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, in August 2011, andYou will come to justice in 2016. It is expected to circle Jupiter 32 times, covering a distance of 4,800 kilometers above the cloud tops, for about a year. Juno will be the first spacecraft to receive the energy for its operation from the Sun, despite Jupiter's great distance from the Sun.
"Jupiter is over 644 million kilometers from the Sun, 5 times farther than Earth," Bolton said. Juno is designed to be efficient in terms of its energy consumption."
Juno will contain a camera and nine scientific instruments that will explore the hidden world beneath Jupiter's colorful clouds. The suite of scientific instruments will investigate the existence of a rocky core, Jupiter's massive magnetic field, the water and ammonia clouds in the deep atmosphere, and investigate Jupiter's aurora borealis.
"In Greek and Roman mythology, Jupiter's wife, Juno, looks through the layer of clouds to see when her husband does unfair things." said Prof. Toby Owen, Scientific Management Associate, and faculty member of the University of Hawaii at Honolulu. "Our Juno looks through Jupiter's clouds to see what the planet is made of, not to look for unseemly behavior, but signs of water, the basic ingredient of life."
Understanding how Jupiter formed is essential to understanding the processes that led to the development of the rest of the bodies in the solar system and the conditions that led to the formation of the Earth and humanity. Like the Sun, Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. A small percentage of the planet is made up of heavier materials. However, Jupiter rightly has a greater proportion of these heavy substances compared to the Sun.
"The ability to accurately determine the gravitational field and the magnetic field of Jupiter will allow Juno to understand what is happening deep within the planet" says Prof. Dave Stevenson, from the California Institute of Technology in Spadina. "These measurements and additional measurements will allow us to know how the various components of Jupiter are distributed, how it was formed and how it developed, which is a central element in our understanding of the nature of the solar system."
Deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, under the enormous pressure that prevails there, hydrogen is compressed into a liquid state known as metallic hydrogen. At these vast depths, hydrogen behaves like an electrically conductive metal that is believed to be the source of Jupiter's enormous magnetic field, and it is also possible that Jupiter has a solid core at its center.
"Juno will provide us with a fantastic opportunity to get a picture of the structure of Jupiter in a way that has not been possible before," said James Green, director of the Planetary Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It will allow us to take a big step forward in our understanding of how the giant planet formed and the role it played in organizing the rest of the solar system."
The Juno mission is the second spacecraft designed as part of NASA's New Frontiers program. The first spacecraft was the New Horizons mission, launched in January 2006 and scheduled to reach Pluto and Charon in 2015. The program will provide opportunities to carry out medium-scale missions identified as suitable for high-importance objectives as recommended by the Space Research Team of the National Development Council in Washington.
The Juno mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Lockheed Martin of Denver is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency donated the infrared spectrometer device, and part of the radio systems of the scientific experiments. From NASA's announcement it is not clear whether the European Space Agency will also have a part in the project, Despite the proposal of the Europeans.
One response
In my opinion, it is more important to send research spacecraft to the moons of Jupiter for the purpose of testing whether they are suitable for human habitation.