Remember Juno's not an imaging mission; its main goals are getting at Jupiter's internal structure through gravity, magnetometer data, etc. The mission is designed to permit it to probe Jupiter's gravity and other fields at a wide variety of distances from the planet, to map things out in 3D. It's only carrying a camera at all because people like us would be pretty annoyed if a spacecraft went to Jupiter without one

I'm sure Juno's scientific results will be revelatory - but I still feel kind of sad that they are not going with a decent camera system.

It isn't a bad camera, and if you don't have a wavelength bias, Juno has an very nice imaging UV spectrometer.

Very true. This should be an exciting mission both visually and scientifically.

That will excite the insectoids among us.

Don't forget italian infrared camera/spectrometer!

It's based on the MSL/MARDI

Given how close the orbiter comes to Jupiter and the size of Jupiter, the camera is well sized to the task. I just wish they had included a near-IR filter to see lower into the cloud decks.

I will echo machi's response here: "Don't forget italian infrared camera/spectrometer" It will look up to 5 micron, where you can see quite low.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18680411

Full inline quote removed - ADMIN

Quite true, but there's a big gap between red (~0.65 microns) and the 2 micron minimum on the Italian infrared camera/spectrometer. The JunoCAM's CCD almost certainly covers the near infrared (~0.8 micros), but it probably wasn't worth the cost of validating the camera with an additional filter (or the design couldn't spare the extra rows for another filter assuming that the filters are applied directly to the CCD). It would have been nice since I believe JunoCAM may have higher spatial resolution (the Italian instrument has a 10 nm resolution; can anyone compare that to JunoCAM's resolution?)

This presentation includes lots of details of the Italian camera, including some simulated images

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/new...no20100405.html

Juno Taking Shape in Denver

Assembly has begun on NASA's Juno spacecraft, which will help scientists understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. The mission, whose principal investigator is Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Tex., is expected to launch in August 2011 and reach Jupiter in 2016.

The assembly, testing and launch operations phase began April 1 in a high-bay clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver. Engineers and technicians will spend the next few months fitting instruments and navigation equipment onto the spacecraft.

"We're excited the puzzle pieces are coming together," Bolton said. "We're one important step closer to getting to Jupiter."

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Underneath its dense cloud cover, the planet safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation. As our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter can also provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars.

Juno will have nine science instruments on board to investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter's intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the planet's auroras.

"We plan to be doing a lot of testing in the next few months," said Jan Chodas, the project manager based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We want to make sure the spacecraft is ready for the long journey to Jupiter and the harsh environment it will encounter there."

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency, Rome, is contributing an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.

For more information about Juno, visit http://www.nasa.gov/juno.

That wouldn't necessarily stop NASA...the 2013 MAVEN mission to Mars has no camera aboard. We'll have to hope MRO keeps working!

[End thread hijack, back to your regularly scheduled Juno programming. ]

Yes, but Mars has plenty of attendant missions with cameras, some of which will likely overlap MAVEN. Not true for Jupiter.

Juno Armored Up to Go to Jupiter

With guidance from JPL and the principal investigator, engineers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems designed and built a special radiation vault made of titanium for a centralized electronics hub. While other materials exist that make good radiation blockers, engineers chose titanium because lead is too soft to withstand the vibrations of launch, and some other materials were too difficult to work with.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?rele...elease_2010-230