NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is preparing for its biggest task yet, which involves jumping over the gas giant to avoid freezing to death.
The mission successfully engaged in a 10.5-hour propulsive maneuver on September 30, NASA said in a press release. The goal of this major burn will keep the spacecraft out of what would have been a mission-terminating shadow cast by Jupiter on Juno during its next close flyby of the planet on November 3.
Victory! 🙌Our @NASAJuno mission successfully executed a 10.5-hour propulsion maneuver, keeping the solar-powered spacecraft out of what would have been a mission-ending shadow cast by Jupiter on its next close flyby.
👀See how we did it: https://t.co/B8z2byHFoM pic.twitter.com/IO9FBgXO4I
— NASA (@NASA) October 2, 2019
Juno started the maneuver on Monday at 7:46 p.m. EDT and finished it early on October 1. The maneuver changed the spacecraft’s orbital velocity by 126 mph and consumed roughly 160 pounds of fuel. Without this shift, Juno would have spent 12 hours traveling across the planet’s shadow, which would have possibly drained the spacecraft’s batteries. Without power, Juno would have “died” in the cold and gone into a permanent slumber.
I’m nearing my closest approach to the cloud tops of Jupiter. Speed: about 126,000 mph (202,000 kilometers per hour). If all goes well, pictures from this flyby should be available in the next few days. pic.twitter.com/TC4oZd1NWE
— NASA’s Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) September 12, 2019
“Jumping over the shadow was an amazingly creative solution to what seemed like a fatal geometry. Eclipses are generally not friends of solar-powered spacecraft,” Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said. “Now instead of worrying about freezing to death, I am looking forward to the next science discovery that Jupiter has in store for Juno.”
The spacecraft, which has been moving into deep space since 2011, entered an initial 53-day orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. At first, the mission planned to minimize the size of its orbit to decrease the period between science flybys of the gas giant to every two weeks. However, the project team recommended to NASA to refrain from the main engine burn due to fuel delivery system concerns. Juno’s 53-day orbit provides all the science initially planned, but it will take longer to get the job done. This is what contributed to the need to avoid Jupiter’s shadow.
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