Juno’s First Flyby Sends NASA Intriguing Data, Expect New Images In Coming Weeks

Of the 36 flybys scheduled, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced Juno’s first flyby around the king of the solar system, Jupiter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na9PdOLJMQs

Juno’s first flyby was closest to the planet at 2,600 miles while traveling at 130,000 miles per hour.

NASA says that all of Juno’s instruments were pointed at the planet as it passed by, the closest anything has ever been to the mysterious planet and the first time any such study has ever been conducted to collect new data, according to Juno principal investigator Dr. Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute.

“We are getting some intriguing early data returns as we speak. It will take days for all the science data collected during the flyby to be down-linked and even more to begin to comprehend what Juno and Jupiter are trying to tell us.”

Juno’s first flyby was conducted on Saturday, and Juno’s Twitter account tweeted a close-up image of the surface.

Soarin' over #Jupiter. My 1st up-close look of the gas-giant world was a success! https://t.co/5DghesSgvY pic.twitter.com/BTbhOD8rJy

— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) August 27, 2016

The spacecraft was originally launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and the announcement of it entering Jupiter’s orbit was made on July 4, 2016, which the Inquisitr reported.

The Inquisitr article describes the difficulties in putting the spacecraft into orbit. If it wasn’t angled properly and the jet engines were not triggered during the window they had to slow it down, it would have ended up going out of orbit and apparently fly off into space, making the potential reporting of Juno’s first flyby nonexistent.

Five years to wait would have been too great of an investment for such a failure.

But the end of Juno’s flyby mission through the Jovian system is said to be in February of 2018, where the spacecraft will be redirected to crash into the planet.

That too would be another first, and scientists made sure before it was launched that Juno was not contaminated with bacteria that could survive the mission into space and further contaminate the planet.

Before the completion of Juno’s first flyby — and few images were being released — it was assumed that the spacecraft would only get raw data for NASA to analyze without these images. But the scientists involved in the program are saying they should expect even better images of Jupiter to be released over the next few weeks.

An article by the New York Times talks about the orbit schedule and how they’re planning on lowering Juno again on October 19, where they will fire up the engines again for a 14-day orbit.

Multiple flybys are required in order for researchers to figure out information such as if there’s a rocky center to the planet or to get a different view of the moons. Mostly, NASA hopes to unravel the secrets of how, where, and why Jupiter formed.

The article quoted Doctor Heidi Becker, who is the leader of the radiation monitoring team, on the intense radiation particles Juno has to endure during these flybys.

“They will go right through a spacecraft and strip the atoms apart inside your electronics and fry your brain if you don’t do anything about it.”

The New York Times further elaborated on how NASA is going to manage the intense radiation during these flybys.

“The assault of radiation each time Juno zooms past Jupiter will take its toll on the electronics. As the mission progresses, the orientation of the orbits will pivot, and Juno will pass through the more violent portions of the radiation belts.”

With the constant hits of radiation the Juno Spacecraft takes, one has to wonder if the spacecraft will be able to last the entirety of the mission.

But due to the success of Juno’s first flyby, NASA is confident that the entire mission will provide them with the greatest opportunity to learn more about our solar system, which shows that the wealth of information gathered will better fuel other prospects in the space program.

[Photo by Juno/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/AP Images]