Updates Juno Mission News and Updates

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NASA:
July 26, 2011​
MEDIA ADVISORY : M11-156
NASA Sets Launch Coverage Events For Mission To Jupiter


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Juno spacecraft is set to launch toward Jupiter aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Aug. 5. The launch window extends from 11:34 a.m. to 12:33 p.m. EDT [15:34 - 16:33 UTC], and the launch period extends through Aug. 26.

The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016 on a mission to investigate the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed views of the planet's poles.

NASA will host a prelaunch news conference in the News Center at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Aug. 3, at 1 p.m. EDT [17:00 UTC]. Conference participants are:
  • Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate
    NASA Headquarters, Washington
  • Omar Baez, NASA launch director at Kennedy
  • Vernon Thorp, program manager, NASA Missions, United Launch Alliance, Denver
  • Jan Chodas, Juno project manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
  • Tim Gasparini, Juno program manager, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver
  • Clay Flinn, Atlas V launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

A Juno mission science briefing will follow the prelaunch news conference. Briefing participants are:
  • Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
  • Toby Owen, Juno co-investigator, University of Hawaii
  • Jack Connerney, Juno Instrument lead, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
  • Andy Ingersol, Juno co-investigator, Cal Tech, Pasadena
  • Fran Bagenai, Juno co-investigator, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Candy Hansen, Juno co-investigator, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson

A news conference will be held at the Kennedy News Center approximately 2.5 hours after launch, and a news release will be issued as soon as Juno's condition is determined. Spokespersons will be available for interviews.

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Juno took its middle-of-the-night road trip from Titusville to the Complex 41 launch site, riding aboard a trailer-like transporter from the commercially-run Astrotech satellite processing campus to the Atlas 5 rocket's homebase at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The slow-moving drive crossed the river, went northward through Kennedy Space Center, passed by the Vehicle Assembly Building and the old space shuttle launch pad before cruising down along the beach to the Atlas rocket's Vertical Integration Facility.

Cranes will hoist the Juno spacecraft into position atop the rocket for attachment to the Centaur upper stage later today.

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http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av029/srb1/01.jpg

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There are many photo's to place here, so here are the links to the pages
ATLAS FIRST STAGE STACKED
THE FIRST SOLID MOTOR ADDED
FIFTH AND FINAL SRB ATTACHED
CENTAUR UPPER STAGE HOISTED
JUNO SPACECRAFT ENCAPSULATED
 

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NASA / NASA JPL:
NASA's Jupiter-Bound Juno Spacecraft Mated to Its Rocket

July 27, 2011

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Juno spacecraft completed its last significant terrestrial journey today, July 27, with a 15-mile (25-kilometer) trip from Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., to its launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The solar-powered, Jupiter-bound spacecraft was secured into place on top of its rocket at 10:42 a.m. EDT (7:42 a.m. PDT) [14:42 UTC].

Juno will arrive at Jupiter in July 2016 and orbit its poles 33 times to learn more about the gas giant's interior, atmosphere and aurora.

"We're about to start our journey to Jupiter to unlock the secrets of the early solar system," said Scott Bolton, the mission's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "After eight years of development, the spacecraft is ready for its important mission."

Now that the Juno payload is atop the most powerful Atlas rocket ever made -- the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 -- a final flurry of checks and tests can begin and confirm that all is go for launch. The final series of checks begins Wednesday with an on-pad functional test. The test is designed to confirm that the spacecraft is healthy after the fueling, encapsulation and transport operations.

"The on-pad functional test is the first of seven tests and reviews that Juno and its flight team will undergo during the spacecraft's last 10 days on Earth," said Jan Chodas, Juno's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "There are a number of remaining pre-launch activities that we still need to focus on, but the team is really excited that the final days of preparation, which we've been anticipating for years, are finally here. We are ready to go."

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NASA Press Release: RELEASE : 11-251 - NASA's Jupiter-Bound Juno Spacecraft Mated to Its Rocket
 

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SPACE.com: Infographic: How NASA's Juno Mission to Jupiter Works (Infographic)


juno-jupiter-probe-infographic.jpg





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These are basic questions, but I'm wunnern why the Atlas booster has asymmetrical solids? They are positioned as 3 on one side and 2 on the other side. To me that says there would be a thrust imbalance.

And doesn't the rocket need to waste thrust to compensate for the imbalance? What am I missing here?

Also, I hear that the centaur upper stage spins up the spacecraft after solar panels are deployed, however all video demos show the spacecraft spinning before the panels are unfolded.

That doesn't make sense either.
 

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These are basic questions, but I'm wunnern why the Atlas booster has asymmetrical solids? They are positioned as 3 on one side and 2 on the other side. To me that says there would be a thrust imbalance.

This has been done before ; earlier this year the Atlas V was launched with only 1 GEM-60. The rocket may "waste" some fuel, but the balance is still very positive.

Adding another SRM to "balance" the thrust is unnecessary, allowing to save a GEM-60 for another launch. That's where the EELV concept is really interesting : strap just what you need. :thumbup:
 

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These are basic questions, but I'm wunnern why the Atlas booster has asymmetrical solids? They are positioned as 3 on one side and 2 on the other side. To me that says there would be a thrust imbalance.

And doesn't the rocket need to waste thrust to compensate for the imbalance? What am I missing here?

The boosters have their nozzles angled slightly outward at something like 3deg. This puts their thrust roughly through the vehicle center of mass, so it doesn't matter how out of balance they are. You could, but they don't, put all three on one side and it would still work.

This 3deg angle means that a little bit of thrust is off-axis, but cos(3deg)=99.8% of the thrust is on-axis.
 

DaveS

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This has been done before ; earlier this year the Atlas V was launched with only 1 GEM-60. The rocket may "waste" some fuel, but the balance is still very positive.

Adding another SRM to "balance" the thrust is unnecessary, allowing to save a GEM-60 for another launch. That's where the EELV concept is really interesting : strap just what you need. :thumbup:
The GEM-60's are only for the Delta IV. They are made by ATK while the Atlas V SRBs are made by Aerojet.
 

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NASA JPL / NASA:
Juno to Show Jupiter's Magnetic Field in High-Def

August 01, 2011

When it comes to magnetic fields, Jupiter is the ultimate muscle car. It's endowed with the biggest, brawniest field of any planet in the solar system, powered by a monster engine under the hood.

Click on image for details​
Jupiter is probably the best place in the solar system to study how the magnetic fields of planets are generated. The Juno spacecraft will make the five-year, 400-million-mile voyage to Jupiter and orbit the planet, collecting data for more than one Earth year.
Artist concept credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech​


Figuring out how this mighty engine, or dynamo, works is one goal of NASA's Juno mission, which is scheduled to begin its five-year, 400-million-mile voyage to Jupiter in August 2011. Juno will orbit the planet for about a year, investigating its origin and evolution with eight instruments to probe its internal structure and gravity field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, map its powerful magnetic field and observe its intense auroras.

The magnetic field studies will be the job of Juno's twin magnetometers, designed and built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. They will measure the field's magnitude and direction with greater accuracy than any previous instrument, revealing it for the first time in high-def.

"Valuable information about Jupiter’s magnetic field was gathered by the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions in the early 1970s and Voyagers 1 and 2 in the late '70s," says NASA Goddard's Jack Connerney, Juno's deputy principal investigator and head of the magnetometer team. Connerney is collaborating with the mission's principal investigator, Scott Bolton, at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "But previous spacecraft orbited among Jupiter's moons; Juno, a polar orbiter, will be the first magnetic mapping mission to Jupiter."

"Mapping Jupiter's magnetic field is one of the very few ways available to learn about Jupiter's deep internal structure," says Juno's project scientist, Steven Levin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which manages the Juno mission. That's because Jupiter's atmosphere is compressed so much by its powerful gravity field that it becomes impenetrable to most sensing techniques.

"In addition," Levin says, "Jupiter may be the best place in the solar system to study how planetary magnetic fields are generated."


Jupiter: Just Right

Massive Jupiter has the most powerful magnetic field of any planet in the solar system. That is but one advantage. Jupiter is a gas giant that offers a clear view to its dynamo. In contrast, Earth's dynamo is partially hidden beneath a layer of magnetized crustal rock. And Earth's dynamo is buried quite deep -- about halfway to the planet's center -- whereas Jupiter's dynamo region extends much closer to the surface of that planet.

"The Juno spacecraft will pass repeatedly just above Jupiter's surface, so we will get closer to the dynamo there than we could on any other planet in the solar system," explains Connerney. "That's a very exciting prospect because it will really enhance our ability to determine what's going on." For Earth, the dynamo is generated in the liquid iron of the outer core. For Jupiter, it's generated in hydrogen, which makes up about 90 percent of the planet. Some of the hydrogen is in a special gas form -- a gas that can conduct electricity, because it's under enough pressure to squeeze the electrons off the molecules. Closer to the core, the gas gets compressed even more, turning it into a liquid called metallic hydrogen. Whether the metallic hydrogen or the electrically conducting gas is the source of Jupiter's magnetic field remains a question -- one that Juno is designed to answer.

"With Juno, we hope to see the detailed structure of Jupiter's magnetic field with a resolution far beyond that previously obtained," says Jeremy Bloxham, a Juno co-investigator at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "We also hope to be able to use the structure of the field to infer the internal structure of Jupiter, in particular to determine the radius of Jupiter's inner core."


Up Close and Personal

Juno's oval-shaped, or elliptical, orbit will bring it closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft and then take it farther than the moon Callisto and back again. Rather than flying around the equator, Juno will be the first spacecraft to orbit pole to pole, passing over the planet's north and south poles during the close-in part of its orbit. That is when Juno gets a bird's eye view of Jupiter's intense auroras, along with measurements of the charged particles and currents associated with them. The spacecraft will make about 34 of these loops, ultimately covering the entire globe during the course of roughly an earth year.

The spacecraft will come close enough to Jupiter to feel the full strength of its magnetic field -- about 10 to 12 Gauss compared to Earth's field of about half a Gauss. Yet elsewhere in the orbit, Juno will measure a field that's about 10 million times weaker.

Click on image to enlarge​
The Juno spacecraft, folded up and awaiting encapsulation in the rocket fairing. The 13-foot-long magnetometer boom, wrapped in bright thermal blankets, is in the foreground atop a stack of folded solar arrays. One of the twin magnetometers is mounted in the middle of the boom, and the other is mounted at the outermost end. Next to each magnetometer sensor is a pair of rectangular hoods, or light baffles, peeking out from under the thermal blankets; these define the fields of view for the two star cameras, which determine the orientation of each magnetometer sensor with great accuracy.
Credit: NASA/JPL/LMSS​


Juno's two magnetometers are identical, and both measure fields weak and strong. The instruments sit about 6-1/2 feet apart on the magnetometer boom, a composite structure fastened to the end of one of the three solar arrays. Two magnetometers are on board in case one should fail and in case the spacecraft starts to generate its own stray magnetic field, which would need to be corrected for in the measurements. Such a field would be small, but the magnetometers can detect differences so slight that the instrument closer to the spacecraft would sense a stronger field than the one farther out on the boom.

Juno will measure the magnetic field about 60 times per second while the entire spacecraft spins twice each minute. The strength and direction of the field are measured relative to the spinning spacecraft, but scientists really want to know the field's direction relative to Jupiter and the universe. This job requires the help of the star cameras.

Each magnetometer's sensor is equipped with two star cameras to determine the sensor's exact orientation in space. The camera snaps an image of the night sky every four seconds. The star camera identifies all of the bright objects in its field of view and uses a clever algorithm to compare what it "sees" with a catalog of known stars. The sensor's orientation in space is the one that best matches the stars in the catalog.

"If we have even the tiniest little deviation when we determine the orientation, it will impact the measurement of the magnetic field," says the leader of the star-camera team, John Jorgensen of the Danish Technical University, near Copenhagen.

The exquisite accuracy of the magnetometers is due in part to this ability to pinpoint the orientation of the sensor in space, which is just as important as the design and painstaking calibration of the instruments.

"Juno's measurements may be accurate enough to detect slow time variations in Jupiter's magnetic field," Connerney says. "If Jupiter has these variations, measuring them will let us visualize for the first time how the planet's dynamo works. And that will give us a new understanding of the dynamos of other planets, both here in our solar system and beyond."

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NASA Press Release: RELEASE : 11-255 - NASA Invites 150 Lucky Twitter Followers To Launch Of Jupiter-Bound Spacecraft
 

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Florida Today: NASA Eyes Juno Launch Friday & TS Emily:
Forecasters at the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron say there is a 70 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for launch on Friday. However, Tropical Storm Emily is expected to strengthen and be in close proximity to central Florida by Saturday. Twenty- to 30-knot winds are expected along with an increasing chance of rain showers. There is a 60 percent chance weather would force a scrub on Saturday or Sunday.

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SPACE.com: NASA's Juno Mission to Jupiter Poised for Friday Launch
 

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Florida Today - The Flame Trench: Launch Forecast 70 Percent 'Go' On Friday:
Final preparations for the roll out of an Atlas V rocket are under way today at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as NASA and United Launch Alliance gear up for launch Friday of a $1.1 billion mission to Jupiter.

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The weather forecast calls for a 70 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for launch. However, launch managers are keeping close tabs on Tropical Storm Emily, which now is located about 1,000 miles southeast of the launch complex. The storm is expected to sweep east of the coast of Cape Canaveral on Saturday, driving up the probability of a launch weather violation significantly. Forecasters say there is a 60 percent chance that weather would not be acceptable for a launch Saturday. The outlook for Sunday returns to a 70 percent probability of acceptable launch weather.

You can read the detailed forecast from the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron HERE (PDF).

Click on the image to enlarge the storm plot.


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SPACE.com: NASA's New Juno Mission to Explore Jupiter's Mysteries

Spaceflight Now: Get to know Juno's launcher: The Atlas 5 rocket

 

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NASA JPL:

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Click on images to view details​
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A plaque dedicated to the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei can be seen here on NASA's Juno spacecraft.
 
The plaque, which was provided by the Italian Space Agency, measures 2.8 by 2 inches (71 by 51 millimeters), is made of flight-grade aluminum and weighs six grams (0.2 ounces). It was bonded to Juno's propulsion bay with a spacecraft-grade epoxy. The graphic on the plaque depicts a self-portrait of Galileo. It also includes -- in Galileo's own hand -- a passage he made in 1610 of observations of Jupiter, archived in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence.​
 ​
Galileo's text included on the plaque reads as follows: “On the 11th it was in this formation -- and the star closest to Jupiter was half the size than the other and very close to the other so that during the previous nights all of the three observed stars looked of the same dimension and among them equally afar; so that it is evident that around Jupiter there are three moving stars invisible till this time to everyone.”​
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC​
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Three LEGO figurines representing the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno and Galileo Galilei are shown here aboard the Juno spacecraft.
 
Juno spacecraft will carry the 1.5-inch likeness of Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno to Jupiter when the spacecraft launches this Friday, Aug. 5. The inclusion of the three mini-statues, or figurines, is part of a joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.​
 ​
Juno holds a magnifying glass to signify her search for the truth, while her husband holds a lightning bolt. The third LEGO crew member is Galileo Galilei, who made several important discoveries about Jupiter, including the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honor). Of course, the miniature Galileo has his telescope with him on the journey.​
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC​

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Image credit: LEGO​


SPACE.com:
 

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From http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av029/status.html

As of 11 p.m. EDT, Tropical Storm Emily was located south of Hispaniola with sustained winds of 50 mph. The system made a very gradual westward movement this evening and still not started a northerly turn that would keep Emily away from Florida.

"The uncertainty in the track forecast continues to be larger than normal given the current slow motion," the National Hurricane Center said in its 11 p.m. update.

"If a northward component of motion does not begin soon or the track guidance shifts farther to the left in future cycles the threat to Florida and the southeastern United States will increase."
 

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Florida Today - The Flame Trench: Atlas 'Go' To Roll Out For Friday Launch :
NASA just gave United Launch Alliance a green light to move a powerful Atlas rocket out to its oceanside launch pad, setting the stage for the planned launch Friday of the Juno spacecraft and a six-year sojourn to Jupiter.

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Launch managers still are keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Emily, which now is meandering just south of Hispaniola and is expected to resume a west-northwest track later this morning. The storm is expected to be out over the Atlantic Ocean due east of Cape Canaveral early Sunday.



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Spaceflight Now: Mission Status Center:
1208 GMT (8:08 a.m. EDT)The Atlas 5 rocket is emerging from its vehicle assembly building for the journey to the launch pad.

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1201 GMT (8:01 a.m. EDT)The rocket's rollout to the pad has begun!

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You can watch the rollout live on Spaceflight Now Livestream channel.
 
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