NASA Jupiter Probe Sets Distance Record for Solar-Powered Spacecraft, A NASA aircraft in the home amplitude of its five-year adventure to Jupiter has just become the farthest-flung solar-powered delving in history.
On Wednesday (Jan. 13), NASA's Juno aircraft zoomed accomplished the antecedent almanac of 492 actor afar (792 actor kilometers) from the sun, which was captivated by the European Amplitude Agency's comet-chasing Rosetta mission, NASA admiral said.
Juno is appointed to access apogee about Jupiter on July 4, and anon thereafter activate mapping out the gas giant's able gravitational and alluring fields in absolute detail. These observations should acknowledge a abundant accord about the planet's structure, accumulation and evolution, including whether or not it has a solid core, mission aggregation associates accept said. [?Photos: NASA's Juno Mission to Jupiter]
"Juno is all about blame the bend of technology to advice us apprentice about our origins," Juno arch investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a statement.
"We use every accepted address to see through Jupiter's clouds and acknowledge the secrets Jupiter holds of our solar system's aboriginal history," Bolton added. "It just seems appropriate that the sun is allowance us apprentice about the agent of Jupiter and the added planets that apogee it."
The 4-ton Juno delving carries three 30-foot-long (9 meters) solar panels, which authority a absolute of 18,698 alone solar cells, abundant to accomplish 14 application of electricity actuality on Earth, NASA admiral said. But the bearings will be absolutely altered at Jupiter.
"Jupiter is 5 times further from the sun than Earth [is], and the sunlight that alcove that far out packs 25 times beneath punch," Juno activity administrator Rick Nybakken, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in the aforementioned statement. "While our massive solar arrays will be breeding alone 500 watts if we are at Jupiter, Juno is actual calmly designed, and it will be added than abundant to get the job done."
The $1.1 billion Juno mission, which launched on Aug. 5, 2011, will abide abacus to the ambit almanac for a while yet. The delving will eventually get a best of 517 actor afar (832 actor km) from the sun during its 16-month science mission, NASA admiral said.
"It is air-conditioned we got the almanac and that our committed aggregation of engineers and scientists can book up addition aboriginal in amplitude exploration," Bolton said. "But the best is yet to come. We are accomplishing these annal and venturing so far out for a acumen — to bigger accept the bigger apple in our solar arrangement and thereby bigger accept area we came from."
Europe's Rosetta mission set the antecedent ambit almanac in October 2012, while it was block down Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta bent the comet in August 2014, and in November of that year, the delving alone a lander alleged Philae assimilate the icy object's surface.
Rosetta is still orbiting Comet 67P, which fabricated its abutting access to the sun in August 2015 and is now zooming aback against the alien solar system. The comet and Rosetta are currently about 196.4 actor afar (316 actor km) from the sun, according to the European Amplitude Agency's Rosetta-tracking website.
Rosetta will not get a adventitious to breach Juno's record. The European delving will end its mission by ambagious down assimilate Comet 67P's apparent on Sept. 30 of this year, if the brace are about 356 actor afar (573 actor km) from the sun.
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