Enidigm
1722
300 feet? That’s no moon, it’s an intergalactic luxury rock.
Juno is getting really close to opening its eyes on Jupiter!!!
Some amazing information on Radiation shielding built into the spacecraft. Check out that puppy:
Each titanium wall measures nearly a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass. This titanium box – about the size of an SUV’s trunk – encloses Juno’s command and data handling box (the spacecraft’s brain), power and data distribution unit (its heart) and about 20 other electronic assemblies. The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds).
Mmmm, tantalizing science data…
1 more day… Just 1 more day! Can’t wait! Please, please, please work!
It’s official, New Horizons (the Pluto probe) is scheduled to fly by another Kupier belt object (2014 MU69) in 2019.
New Horizons will reach the object on January 1st 2019, one billion miles past Pluto. The object is only about 20 miles across, but the probe will be 1/4 as distant from MU69 as its closest approach to Pluto.
fire
1727
Reporting back that yes, there were celebrations, but mainly for the media. All us normal folks were asked to leave early so we don’t muddy up the place.
fire
1728
But we (MSL ops team) did get to do this cool thing of writing good-luck messages on the windows of the Juno mission control room while the bosses were off in a meeting somewhere.
Don’t worry, it’s whiteboard marker, and it wipes right off.
I am so excited for you Fire. I was hoping by the time I woke up I’d see that Juno had already fired and inserted itself fully so I wouldn’t have to stress all day. I mean, it’s odd I get so stressed and anxious during these wake up and orbital insertions, but to me these are the most exciting things we do in this country. Football and sports = super lame by comparison.
My post got wiped out because of the migration. I encourage anyone remotely interested in the Juno mission to check out the NASA’s Eye Visualization application for real time updates.
Excellent.
So when does Juno get to start sending pictures back to us? I know it’s a human thing to desire images vs. hard data, but we wants the pretty hi-def pics!
I don’t think Juno even has a camera. It’s all,instruments I think.
It does have a camera, called JunoCam.
RichVR
1735
For the orbital insertion all of the sciency stuff was turned off.
Clay
1736
Hmm… this makes me think that it has a camera:
That’s a beautiful image. It’s pretty wild when you look at the orbits of the outer moons and compare it to Io.
Editer
1738
What’s even more beautiful, @jpinard, is the time-lapse Juno took as it approached, where you can watch the “dance” of the planets’ orbits.
Oghier
1739
Nine members of the Juno team, including the project manager, did an Ask Me Anything today over at Reddit. It’s a good read for others slightly obsessed with this mission:
They also mention that Kerbal Space Program is very popular at NASA ;)
Thanks for that Denny. That is incredible. Also shows why Io and Europa have so much internal tidal stretching due to gravitational forces. I’d love it if we could put a probe on Io just for fun. And of course we need to search Europa’s oceans for life :)
Menzo
1741
In my head we get a probe onto Europa and it melts its way all the way down into the ocean. We’re all watching the video feed live, and as soon as it hits the water we find that Europa is just TEAMING with life. Crazy-looking fish and other aquatic creatures everywhere.
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is also high on the priority list apparently.
