Why Juno became a Success?

Juno launched by NASA

Juno was launched on 5th August 2011 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. It is manufactured by Lockheed Martin which is a global aerospace company. It shocked the world, however, the question remains: How did they do that?

Introduction to Design

Previous designs which were sent by NASA like Voyager 1 & 2, The New Horizon and many others were lacking something which Juno is not. Jupiter is a very mysterious planet of our Solar System with huge gravitational forces and intense radiation belts which could destroy anything which comes near close to this Gas Giant.

Designing Phase

Juno has 11 main components installed on board. These components are shown in this picture below:

Juno's design overview by NASA

Installed Components, as said by NASA, includes:

• Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE)
• Gravity Science (GS)
• Magnetometer (MAG)
• Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC)
• Fluxgate Magnetometer (FGM)
• Microwave Radiometer (MWR)
• Plasma Waves Instruments (Waves)
• Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM)
• JunoCam
• Ultraviolet Spectograph (UVS)
• Jupiter Energetic-particle Detector Instrument (JEDI)

The mysteries that these components will solve are mentioned in our previous article.

Related: Juno Reaches Jupiter. Mission Importance

Goodbye to Earth

Juno officially bid farewell to Earth after the second close fly-by of Earth to use the Gravity Assist of the planet on 9th October 2013. This moment was captured in England.

Countering Solar Flares and Cosmic Rays

But first this probe had to encounter its first problem as it was launched and powered on by the NASA's control room. Cosmic Radiations from outer space and Solar Flares from Sun is the first main issue which every probe had to face and so does the Juno. If this problem persists, all the electronic components and detectors installed on board will eventually get destroyed, this is the most common and important problem to be dealt with.

Titanium Vaults taken from Universetoday.com

Juno is installed with electronics and detectors which are designed to tolerate these radiations but still it may cause Juno's sensitive electronics to get damaged, therefore it was necessary for Lockheed Martins to secure these electronic components and detector in a vault where radiation can be minimized at most. The company made 1/2 inches of Titanium vault in the Juno which will withheld the electronic components securely.

Jupiter's Intense Radiation Belts

The second complication which Lockheed Martin had to face was the Intense Radiation Belts of Jupiter. It was all but a gamble to design Juno for its combat with the intense radiation belts around Jupiter. For this reason, the builders installed extra shielding on the probe. The extra shielding was thick and caused the weight of the inboard star tacker to be increased to 4 times than that of the biggest standardized star tracker ever.

Problems for Juno

But in order to really protect the probe from intense radiations, researchers made a decision to calculate the most feasible design for the orbit of Juno in such a manner that it reduces the probability to accord intense radiation belts getting in contact with the probe. This technique is known as Orbit Insertion or specifically, Jupiter Orbit Insertion Burn. Other than this meaningful and rationally calculated decision, Juno would have to extreme chances to counter the particles in that intense radiation belts which are spiraling the Jupiter from top to bottom in just 2 seconds. In other words, those particles are travelling at nearly the speed of light.

Complications in proper maneuvering 

The third problem for Juno was to get into the orbit of Jupiter and near to it as possible by going through the debris ring around Jupiter. Scientists at NASA are not too much concerned about this as a matter of fact as the ring of Jupiter is thin and may extend vertically but still the agency have to consider the consequences as said by Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator at NASA. He said:

We believe the probability is pretty low that we're going to hit one (debris), but it's not zero.

According to Scott Bolton, just one dust particle from the debris ring can cause failure to this mission. If dust enters the engine sooner before Orbit Insertion Burn, the Juno will be blown to debris as well.

So the control room had to shut the engine of Juno down when it would get closer to a required distance to Jupiter, at the right time with hoping positively, after calibrating the probe and acquiring all informative data which was needed by NASA.

Last photo sent by Juno before pre-orbit having its distance of 6.2 million kilometers from Jupiter. This picture shows the moons of Jupiter: Lo, Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede.

Control room turned off its power and began waiting for successful maneuvering. This would cause the Jupiter's strong gravitational forces to attract Juno immensely that it would spin the probe around and turn it towards Jupiter. This resulted in the acceleration of Juno towards its destination to get approximately 250,000 kph making this probe to be the fastest travelling man-made machine.

Artistic image showing Juno in orbit of Jupiter facing its solar panels towards Sun. Pic taken from NASA.

After the Orbit Insertion maneuvering is precisely accomplished and probe spinning is reduced back to a normal of 2 RPM, Juno turned towards the Sun receiving much needed sunlight to charge its batteries. One of the Juno's engine was required to fire engine for at least 20 minutes to get safely into the orbit of Jupiter otherwise Jupiter would have slingshot Juno into the space away from itself.

Its in Orbit!

When Juno got itself safely into the orbit after its victory over Jupiter on 4th of July, all the constructors, scientists, students and other people back on earth were happy and relieved to achieve this massive success. Scott Bolton was nervous and anticipated the whole time of the mission, he said:

I’m excited with anticipation, of course, because we’re finally arriving, but I also have tension and nervousness because there’s a lot riding on what happens July 4.

If proper decisions were not made and the negative consequences were not taken into consideration, Juno had already been destroyed and caused a severe loss to the NASA financially, economically and mentally. But its the the human ingenuity that became victorious against the might Gas Giant!

Zain Ul Mustafa

Cakes, conspiracies, and computers are my daily pills.

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