Juno spacecraft regains memory after mind-blowing flyby of Jupiter, NASA says
NASA’s Juno probe continues to retrieve its memory at Jupiter after a data outage disrupted communications between the spacecraft and its operators on Earth following a flyby of the giant planet in December.
The Juno spacecraftthe last overflight of jupiterits 47th close pass to the planet, was completed on December 14. But like their operators at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory they were receiving science data from the flyby they discovered they could no longer directly access the spacecraft’s memory.
The team successfully restarted Juno’s computer, and on December 17 they put the spacecraft into “safe mode” with only essential systems running as a precaution. How of an update from NASA on December 22 (opens in a new tab), the steps taken by the team to recover Juno’s science data had been making positive progress. Juno operators are now successfully downlinking flyby data.
“The science data from the most recent flyby of Jupiter and its moon Io by the solar-powered spacecraft appears to be intact,” NASA wrote in the update.
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It is now believed that the disruption was caused when Juno flew through the intense radiation from part of Jupiter’s magnetosphere. There is no indication that the radiation spike damaged the data from its approach to Jupiter or its flyby of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io.
The remaining data from Juno’s latest flyby is expected to return to Earth in the coming days, at which point operators can assess whether it has been affected by the outage.
Juno left Earth in August 2011, traveling 1.7 million miles and entering orbit around the gas giant planet 5 years later on July 4, 2016. Becoming the first spacecraft to see through of Jupiter’s dense clouds, Juno’s goal was to answer questions about Jupiter’s composition and origins. .
Related: NASA’s Juno spacecraft takes its most detailed look yet at the icy moon Europa
It takes Juno 53 Earth days to orbit Jupiter, with its main Juno mission calling for 35 orbits, during which it collected 3 terabits of science data and some amazing images of Jupiter and its moons. Because Jupiter is believed to be the oldest world in the solar system, learning more about it could reveal information about the formation of the solar system itself.
These data changed many of the ideas planetary scientists had about Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior by revealing an atmospheric weather layer that extended far beyond its water clouds, as well as a deep interior with a dilute core of heavy elements.
The spacecraft’s primary mission ended in July, and the spacecraft is expected to continue extended science operations until at least 2025, according to the Planetary Society (opens in a new tab).
The spacecraft was expected to exit safe mode this week and will make its next flyby of Jupiter on January 22, 2023.
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