An unforeseen contribution from Juno
Juno, meanwhile, has been running Jupiter in a job since 2016 to collect information about the internal structure, the magnetic field and the atmosphere of the gigantic planet.
“Everything is functional,” said Scott Bolton, the chief scientist on Juno, also from SWRI. “There has been some relegation, things we saw many years ago, but they did not change. In fact, some of them have improved to be honest.”
The only reservation with Juno is some radiation damage to his camera, called Junocam. Juno revolves around the 33 days of Jupiter and the process imprisoned the spacecraft through intense radiation tires by the powerful magnetic field of the planet. Juno's primary mission ended in 2021 and it is now active in an extensive mission that was approved until the end of this month. The extra time exposed to hard radiation is not surprising, the corrupting of the images of Junocam.
Nasa's Juno Mission observed the glow from a lightning bolt in this image from December 30, 2020 of a vortex at the Arctic of Jupiter. Civilian scientist Kevin M. Gill processed the image of unprocessed data from the Junocam instrument on board the space truck.
Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC Door
In an interview with Ars, Bolton suggested that the NASA radiation issue still offers a chance to learn from the Juno mission. Ground teams try to repair the Junocam-Image by glowing, a self-recovery process in which the electronics of the instrument are heated and then cooled down. Engineers tried sparingly glowing hardware data, so Juno's experience could be instructive for future missions.
“Even satellites on earth experience this [radiation damage]But there is very little or known about it, “said Bolton.” In fact, what we learn with Juno has benefits for earth satellites, both commercial and national security. “
Juno's passages by Jupiter's hard radiation tires offer a real-world laboratory for experimenting with glowing in space. “We can't really produce the natural radiation environment at the earth or Jupiter in a lab,” said Bolton.
Lessons learned from Juno can soon be applied to the next probe of NASA that travels to Jupiter. Europe Clipper was launched last year and is on track to go into the track around Jupiter in 2030, when the regular Flybys starts at low altitude of the planet of the planet. Before the launch of Clipper, engineers discovered a mistake that could make the transistors of the spacecraft more susceptible to radiation damage. NASA managers decided to continue with the mission because they decided that the damage could be repaired at Jupiter with glowing.
