Can anyone tell me what specific power the Juno arrays achieve, in W/kg? Thanks!
"The entire solar arrays combined are almost 750 pounds," Gehling said. "They’re a little more massive than typical solar arrays because of all these various requirements of stiffness and pointing and carrying the magnetometer."The reason the wings have to be so stiff and strong is because Juno will be a spinning spacecraft -- another retro-aspect of this mission. "The wings dominate how true it spins on its axis," Gehling said. "Our goal is to make it spin about the direction of our high gain antenna boresight."
Say years from now a comet is inbound and Juno just happens to be in the right spot. How long could they keep it in orbit I wonder?
So it must be essentially half way from launch to its planned Earth flyby?
This is coming from a news agency (AP). Still waiting on NASA to report it officially.Jupiter-bound craft's 2nd maneuver delayed 10 dayshttp://news.yahoo.com/jupiter-bound-crafts-2nd-maneuver-delayed-10-days-235143798.html
September 17, 2012PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully executed a second Deep Space Maneuver, called DSM-2 last Friday, Sept. 14. [...] Based on telemetry, the Juno project team believes the burn was accurate
NASA's Juno spacecraft is halfway to Jupiter. The Jovian-system-bound spacecraft reached the milestone today (8/12/13) at 5:25 a.m. PDT (8:25 a.m. EDT/12:25 UTC)."Juno's odometer just clicked over to 9.464 astronomical units," said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "The team is looking forward, preparing for the day we enter orbit around the most massive planet in our solar system."