WASHINGTON -- NASA is officially moving forward on a mission to
conduct an unprecedented, in-depth study of Jupiter.
Called Juno, the mission will be the first in which a spacecraft is
placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to
understand its formation, evolution and structure. Underneath its
dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental
processes and conditions that governed our early solar system.
"Jupiter is the archetype of giant planets in our solar system and
formed very early, capturing most of the material left after the sun
formed," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the
Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Unlike Earth, Jupiter's
giant mass allowed it to hold onto its original composition,
providing us with a way of tracing our solar system's history."
The spacecraft is scheduled to launch aboard an Atlas rocket from Cape
Canaveral, Fla., in August 2011, reaching Jupiter in 2016. The
spacecraft will orbit Jupiter 32 times, skimming about 3,000 miles
over the planet's cloud tops for approximately one year. The mission
will be the first solar powered spacecraft designed to operate
despite the great distance from the sun.
"Jupiter is more than 400 million miles from the sun or five times
further than Earth," Bolton said. "Juno is engineered to be extremely
energy efficient."
The spacecraft will use a camera and nine science instruments to study
the hidden world beneath Jupiter's colorful clouds. The suite of
science instruments will investigate the existence of an ice-rock
core, Jupiter's intense magnetic field, water and ammonia clouds in
the deep atmosphere, and explore the planet's aurora borealis.
"In Greek and Roman mythology, Jupiter's wife Juno peered through
Jupiter's veil of clouds to watch over her husband's mischief," said
Professor Toby Owen, co-investigator at the University of Hawaii in
Honolulu. "Our Juno looks through Jupiter's clouds to see what the
planet is up to, not seeking signs of misbehavior, but searching for
whispers of water, the ultimate essence of life."
Understanding the formation of Jupiter is essential to understanding
the processes that led to the development of the rest of our solar
system and what the conditions were that led to Earth and humankind.
Similar to the sun, Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and
helium. A small percentage of the planet is composed of heavier
elements. However, Jupiter has a larger percentage of these heavier
elements than the sun.
"Juno's extraordinarily accurate determination of the gravity and
magnetic fields of Jupiter will enable us to understand what is going
on deep down in the planet," said Professor Dave Stevenson,
co-investigator at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. "These and other measurements will inform us about how
Jupiter's constituents are distributed, how Jupiter formed and how it
evolved, which is a central part of our growing understanding of the
nature of our solar system."
Deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, under great pressure, hydrogen gas is
squeezed into a fluid known as metallic hydrogen. At these great
depths, the hydrogen acts like an electrically conducting metal which
is believed to be the source of the planet's intense magnetic field.
Jupiter also may have a rocky solid core at the center.
"Juno gives us a fantastic opportunity to get a picture of the
structure of Jupiter in a way never before possible," said James
Green, director of NASA's Planetary Division at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "It will allow us to take a giant step forward in our
understanding on how giant planets form and the role that plays in
putting the rest of the solar system together. "
The Juno mission is the second spacecraft designed under NASA's New
Frontiers Program. The first was the Pluto New Horizons mission,
launched in January 2006 and scheduled to reach Pluto's moon Charon
in 2015. The program provides opportunities to carry out several
medium-class missions identified as top priority objectives in the
Decadal Solar System Exploration Survey, conducted by the Space
Studies Board of the National Research Council in Washington.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno
mission. Lockheed Martin of Denver is building the spacecraft. The
Italian Space Agency is contributing an infrared spectrometer
instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.
For more information about the Juno mission, visit:
http://juno.nasa.gov
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