A deep space probe expected to enter Jupiter’s orbit on July 4 may completely unravel every theory humans have about the early formation of our solar system.
That’s exactly what Steve Levin, the Juno mission’s project scientist, is excited about.
“I’m kind of hoping for that, because it will be the most fun,” Levin said.
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Six microwave antennas from the Juno spacecraft will launch a volley into Jupiter’s cloudy atmosphere to detect the gas giant’s concentrations of water and oxygen. One theory for Jupiter’s formation surmises that cosmic ice — and Jupiter’s distance from the sun — allowed it to capture the hydrogen and helium it is largely made out of. In the 1990s, an earlier spacecraft, Galileo, dropped a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere and surprisingly found little water.
Scientists believe Galileo may have hit a particularly dry area of the planet, but Levin said if Juno finds a similar concentration of water throughout the planet, it would contradict every theory about Jupiter’s formation and send scientists back to the drawing board.
“You need to know the water content to know if the theory works,” Levin said.
What Juno will teach us about Jupiter
The Juno mission, led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, launched its spacecraft in 2011 for a five-year journey to Jupiter, our solar system’s largest and most massive planet.
Jupiter is 1,400 times the size of Earth and contains nearly the same composition as the sun, according to Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator.
“We want to understand how Jupiter formed,” Bolton said. “In many ways, what we’re after is the recipe for a solar system.”
• Photos: JPL’s Juno Mission to Jupiter
While Jupiter mirrors the sun’s composition, it has three to four times more heavy elements, like carbon and nitrogen, Bolton said.
“The stuff Jupiter has more of, is what we’re all made of,” Bolton said. “That’s why Jupiter represents such an important part of the recipe.”
Juno, named for the Roman goddess who could see past her husband Jupiter’s smokescreens, will look through Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere using micro-, ultraviolet, infrared and plasma waves. The instruments will help map the planet’s gravity and magnetic fields; its water and oxygen concentrations; and determine the “chemical fingerprint” of the planet’s gases.
NASA plans to investigate the planet’s suspected oddities, such as rivers of metallic hydrogen created by the planet’s intense pressure and enormous auroras, significantly larger than those on Earth.
“Everything about Jupiter is extreme, it’s a planet on steroids,” Bolton said.
Jupiter is one of the harshest environments in our solar system. Juno will be bombarded with heavy radiation — the equivalent of 100 million dental X-rays — throughout its orbit.
To protect the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics, JPL and NASA built a titanium vault to house their instruments. It’s the first time the idea has been used in a space mission, according to Levin.
How Juno will get into place
The solar-powered deep space probe is still more than 10 million miles away from Jupiter. When it arrives on July 4, NASA will shut down every system, except for the engine, while it attempts to slow down the spacecraft enough to be pulled in by the planet’s orbit.
Juno’s polar orbit of Jupiter, the first ever, will allow it to cover more of the planet than a traditional equatorial orbit.
“We’ll all be a little nervous,” said Levin, who along with the other team members will be watching from JPL’s control room when Juno fires its engines. Once the spacecraft enters orbit, the scientific mission will begin 53 days later, he said.
Juno is expected to circle the planet 37 times over 20 months, dropping as low as 3,100 miles above the cloud tops. In February 2018, NASA will burn up Juno in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The self-destruction is meant to protect Jupiter’s potentially habitable moons from any contaminants aboard the spacecraft, according to NASA.
Help choose what Juno records with its camera
Juno almost left without a traditional camera, but Bolton couldn’t imagine the mission without capturing new images of the giant.
So NASA added the small 2-megapixel JunoCam as a public outreach device. Even though it doesn’t have a scientific function, it will capture a first. As Juno approaches Jupiter, the JunoCam will record its approach. The video will become the first full recording of heavenly bodies circling a planet, according to Bolton. “We know the moon orbits us, and that lots of moons orbit Jupiter, but no one has ever seen a full rotation,” he said.
“We’re going to see what nature really looks like, the cosmos itself,” he said.
For Bolton, it was important for the public — including himself — to be able to see what Juno sees. And in some cases, they’ll even get to choose where the JunoCam aims its lens.
Through the JunoCam website, amateur astronomers can upload telescopic images of Jupiter to help the team at the San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems plan the JunoCam’s targets. Then, people can vote on specific “points of interest,” according to Elsa Jensen, the JunoCam operations engineer at Malin. There’s also a discussion board for fans to talk about the suggestions.
Follow along for every second using this software
NASA’s Visualization Technology Applications and Development team took the concept of following along even further. Through eyes.nasa.gov, you can see exactly where Juno is in the universe right now, and follow it through every movement on July 4.
Using a video game engine, users can speed up, slow down and reverse time. The software uses real flight data and other measurements used by the actual engineering and science teams, rather than relying on pre-built animations. The ability to jump around to different points means you can watch Juno fly by Earth in 2013 — it used us to speed up — or as it approaches Jupiter from one of the planet’s moons.
“You can see all the events take place from Callisto,” said Kevin Hussey, JPL’s visualization technology applications manager.
