Now that the Juno spacecraft has settled into orbit around Jupiter, the real work is about to begin.
Juno is to fly closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft, skipping over cloud tops and peering deep inside to uncover clues about the giant planet’s formation.
Scientists hope that understanding how Jupiter formed can help explain how Earth and the other planets evolved as well.
“Now the fun begins — the science,” mission chief scientist Scott Bolton said on Monday after Juno’s arrival at the end of a five-year journey.
A look at what is coming up during the US$1.1 billion mission:
Juno was bombarded with radiation as it neared Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.
As a precaution, its camera and science instruments were turned off during the arrival. Engineers are to flip them back on this week and perform a complete check of the spacecraft to make sure everything is ready to go for the next 20 months.
CHANGING COURSE
To enter Jupiter’s orbit, Juno fired its rocket motor, putting it on a long, looping path that takes 53 days to complete. Late next month, the spacecraft swings back around Jupiter for its first close-in view.
However, Juno eventually needs to swoop in closer to do its job. The mission kicks into high gear in October when Juno fires its engine again to tighten its orbit. Then every two weeks, the spacecraft will skim Jupiter’s clouds to peek into its stormy atmosphere.
MOON MYSTERY
Juno made a discovery even before reaching its destination. As Juno zeroed in on Jupiter, its camera captured the massive planet appearing half-lit, surrounded by its four main moons. NASA stitched the images together and created a time-lapse video showing the moons in action.
There was a surprise: Jupiter’s second-largest moon, Callisto, appeared dimmer than scientists had imagined it would be.
“We don’t know why,” said Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas.
CLOSEST LOOK
Previous missions to Jupiter have revealed stunning views of the planet’s thick clouds and vivid auroras. Scientists are expecting the best photographs and information yet from Juno.
“We get our first up-and-close personal look at Jupiter with all our eyes and ears open” later this summer, Bolton said.
The spacecraft carries nine instruments to map the planet. It is to measure how much water is in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
This would shed light on where in the solar system Jupiter formed. It is also to probe Jupiter’s gravity and magnetic fields to determine what kind of core it has and what makes the northern and southern lights so intense.
Juno is also to study how deep the trademark Great Red Spot goes and why the centuries-old storm has shrunk in recent years.
FINALE
When Juno finishes its job, it will intentionally plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere and burn up. Galileo, the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, met the same fate after a 14-year mission.
This fiery end expected in 2018 prevents any chance of accidentally crashing into Jupiter’s moons, particularly Europa, considered a prime target in the hunt for microbial life in the solar system.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs