Juno - Jupiter Orbiter Options

[Paolo]

There were 2 very well done articles on Juno in last week's Aviation Week
this is the only one of the two I found on their website: Juno Is Solar Marvel Bound for Jupiter
by the way, you can read them both by searching Aviation Week on www.zinio.com

[punkboi]

Juno's solar arrays are already at Cape Canaveral, undergoing tests. Juno itself should be arriving in Florida sometime next month, I believe

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[belleraphon1]

Follow Juno's high-flying journey to Cape Canaveral Today, Friday 04/08/11

"Ever wonder what it's like to transport delicate billion-dollar space equipment across the country? It takes precision, care and a little heavy-lifting from the Air Force. NASA's Juno spacecraft will fly to Florida on a C-17 Globemaster today to start preparing for launch to Jupiter in August, and Spaceflight Now is going along for the ride."

http://spaceflightnow.com/juno/status.html

blatant political comment removed - admin

Craig

[Explorer1]

They're in motion, according to the status.

Looks like they'll make it just in time!

[punkboi]

NASA's Jupiter-Bound Spacecraft Arrives in Florida

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?rele...elease_2011-113

[punkboi]

High Gain Antenna now attached to Juno

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Bjorn Jonsson]

The Junocam has been delivered:

http://www.msss.com/news/index.php?id=24

And there are some interesting tidbits there, for instance

...is designed to take hundreds of color images of the giant planet, some at resolutions never before seen...

and

Junocam uses precision bandpass filters produced by Barr Associates of Westford, Massachusetts, including a red channel that sees into the near infrared to penetrate more deeply into the jovian atmosphere, and a fourth narrowband near-IR channel to map the abundance of methane

I was starting to fear that the best Voyager mosaics of the Great Red Spot (GRS) were going to remain the best (or at least among the very best) views of the GRS for the next 20-25 years or more but fortunately it now at least seems possible I was wrong.

There are lots of thing I'd love to see at significantly higher resolution than Voyager obtained (for example hi-res time lapse coverage of selected features like the GRS; cloud shadows and vertical 'relief' etc. that is visible in the highest resolution Voyager images) but I don't know if this qualifies as something that is interesting enough from a scientific point of view.

[elakdawalla]

I'm glad they finally said this publicly:

Its wide-angle lens, designed and built by Rockwell-Collins Optronics of Carlsbad, California, produces sharp, low-distortion images that rival the best MSSS cameras have ever taken.

MSSS people seem just giddy about the quality of the images they're getting from this camera. And not only that: the compression algorithms they're using result in so little a reduction in image quality that probably only Bjorn and Gordan will notice the compression artifacts I'm still not quite sure what to expect from this mission in terms of images, but I'm quite confident it'll be much more spectacular than is officially promised.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Planetary Radio had an interview with Scott Bolton yesterday. One of the highlights: The images will be released to the web in raw form as soon as they are received. The best resolution is going to be 3 km/pixel.

If I understand correctly Juno will mainly be doing polar imaging (or the resolution is optimal there - I'm not sure). It would be interesting to know more about this and especially about possible imaging of the latitudes about 20 degrees south of the equator .

[hendric]

I sent a thank you note to the team via http://missionjuno.swri.edu/
Couldn't hurt if more did the same!
Just FYI, there is some kind of character limit in their "contact us" window, so be succinct.

[MarcF]

Juno is almost ready to fly

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/...10707154500.htm

[peter59]

Amazing how low is interest in the Juno mission. I know that Juno is not Cassini, but nevertheless it is mission to Jupiter.
Here is a series of really beautiful images from KSC (including encapsulation).
http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=230
Launch window opens Aug. 5 (only 9 days, 20 hours from now).

[punkboi]

Amazing how low is interest in the Juno mission.

Possibly because it's only designed to last 33 months at Jupiter...as opposed to 7 years and counting for Cassini at Saturn

(That, and there are only so many interesting images the Junocam can take of Jupiter's poles)

[Explorer1]

The destination is still so far away, its like wondering why there's not much fuss about Rosetta or New Horizons yet.

[djellison]

it is mission to Jupiter.

And gets there 5 years from now. What is there to be excited about right now?