NASA - Juno - Updates

[Chris Bergin]

Mission updates on Juno's progress.

Pre Launch Day Updates:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=21164.0

Launch Day Updates:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26327.0

L2 Atlas V/Juno Processing/exclusive images:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=tags&tags=Juno

--

Pre Launch/FRR Article:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/07/nasa-juno-frr-completed-atlas-delta-share-ride-mariner/


Launch/Mission overview - by William Graham
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/08/ula-atlasv-nasa-juno-jupiter/

(You all need to read that article from William, it's superb)

Updates on the spacecraft to follow.

[jcm]

SpaceTrack released an orbit for the Centaur showing it in 13228 x 366146 km x 46.1 deg bound Earth orbit. Did it make a depletion burn that rebound it to the Earth
after spacecraft separation?  (at this stage could just be a SpaceTrack error, instead)

[Bubbinski]

It's been just under 36 hours since the launch, I read that Juno was supposed to be beyond the distance from earth to the moon 24 hours after launch, so it's well on its way.  It'll be interesting to look at the pics from the earth flyby 2 years from now...and of course the Jupiter pics in 5 years. 

Juno's not flying by any asteroids or comets is it? 

By the way I got to catch the launch live and seeing that Atlas 5 with 5 SRB's was pretty neat.  Thanks to Chris and all for excellent coverage (including William's article).

[ugordan]

SpaceTrack released an orbit for the Centaur showing it in 13228 x 366146 km x 46.1 deg bound Earth orbit. Did it make a depletion burn that rebound it to the Earth
after spacecraft separation?  (at this stage could just be a SpaceTrack error, instead)

That doesn't look right. One of the ULA people in the interviews before launch said Centaur will basically be left on the same trajectory as Juno and that it will enter heliocentric orbit with a roughly 2 year period. It would only do some collision avoidance maneuvers after separation.

I doubt it had that much performance margin to burn back to Earth capture, they wouldn't have used 5 solids if it had.

[Lee Jay]

I doubt it had that much performance margin to burn back to Earth capture, they wouldn't have used 5 solids if it had.

I could have sworn I saw 5 solids separate.

[ugordan]

I doubt it had that much performance margin to burn back to Earth capture, they wouldn't have used 5 solids if it had.

I could have sworn I saw 5 solids separate.

What's your point? If Centaur was left with so much propellant after injecting Juno to allow itself to burn back to an Earth capture (which doesn't makes any sense at all in the orbital debris consideration department) then obviously it didn't need all those 5 solids. And yet it did fly a maxed-out configuration.

Aside from the fact the inclination is all wrong for this Centaur, Juno C3 requirement was 31.1 (km/s)^2 which means a velocity at separation of roughly 12.5 km/s. Centaur would have had to do a depletion burn of about 1.3 km/s and this neglects the large plane change that would be needed to explain the inclination difference.

http://www.ulalaunch.com/site/docs/missionbooklets/AV/av_juno_mob.pdf

[Quaxo76]

I've been trying to find a page (or a program) where I can track where Juno is, in real time (if it has "predictions" of positions past and future, then that's even better)... Does anyone know if such a page exists and where it is? I think there was something like that for the two MER rover spacecrafts...

Cristian

[ugordan]

You can use JPL Solar System Simulator until something "better" comes along. Currently it defaults to viewing Juno from "above". You can move forward and back in time. It should have pretty accurate trajectory info, it does for some other missions.

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

Here's where it was at the time of this edit: http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-61&vbody=1001&month=8&day=7&year=2011&hour=19&minute=40&fovmul=1&rfov=40&bfov=30&porbs=1&showsc=1&showac=1

[dsmillman]

I've been trying to find a page (or a program) where I can track where Juno is, in real time (if it has "predictions" of positions past and future, then that's even better)... Does anyone know if such a page exists and where it is? I think there was something like that for the two MER rover spacecrafts...

Cristian

For now your best bet is at this web site:

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

It allows you to get the position of any of a list of spacecraft on a specified date.

[jcm]

SpaceTrack released an orbit for the Centaur showing it in 13228 x 366146 km x 46.1 deg bound Earth orbit. Did it make a depletion burn that rebound it to the Earth
after spacecraft separation?  (at this stage could just be a SpaceTrack error, instead)

That doesn't look right. One of the ULA people in the interviews before launch said Centaur will basically be left on the same trajectory as Juno and that it will enter heliocentric orbit with a roughly 2 year period. It would only do some collision avoidance maneuvers after separation.

I doubt it had that much performance margin to burn back to Earth capture, they wouldn't have used 5 solids if it had.

OK thanks - that makes sense. Just a tracking error.

[AGC]

I've been trying to find a page (or a program) where I can track where Juno is, in real time (if it has "predictions" of positions past and future, then that's even better)... Does anyone know if such a page exists and where it is? I think there was something like that for the two MER rover spacecrafts...

Cristian

I just discovered JPL's Eyes on the Solar System simulator that lets you track Juno and other JPL spacecraft. It is full of impressive features (I've just started exploring). Clicking on the "Feature" option for Juno under the "Tours & Features" link lets you navigate to various points in the timeline such as Deep Space Maneuvers, Earth Flyby, and Jupiter Insertion, etc. It even displays the simulation in 3D if you choose.

Give it a try!

-- Bryce

[kevin-rf]

SpaceTrack released an orbit for the Centaur showing it in 13228 x 366146 km x 46.1 deg bound Earth orbit. Did it make a depletion burn that rebound it to the Earth
after spacecraft separation?  (at this stage could just be a SpaceTrack error, instead)

That doesn't look right. One of the ULA people in the interviews before launch said Centaur will basically be left on the same trajectory as Juno and that it will enter heliocentric orbit with a roughly 2 year period. It would only do some collision avoidance maneuvers after separation.

I doubt it had that much performance margin to burn back to Earth capture, they wouldn't have used 5 solids if it had.

OK thanks - that makes sense. Just a tracking error.

A picture is worth a thousand words, amateur* image of Juno and the Centaur on the way to the moon.

http://www.spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Scott-Ferguson-juno3framestakahashi2_1312616258.gif

[Quaxo76]

I just discovered JPL's Eyes on the Solar System simulator [...]

Give it a try!

-- Bryce

Bryce, thank you for your link. Based on your description, it seems really exciting. Too bad it's based on Unity Web Player, which doesn't support Linux (which is the only OS on all my computers)!

Cristian

[Peter NASA]

The TCM 1 burn was cancelled. Allows earlier testing of the scientific instruments.

[jacqmans]

Jupiter-Bound Space Probe Captures Earth And Moon

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-271&cid=release_2011-271

PASADENA, Calif. – On its way to the biggest planet in the solar system -- Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft took time to capture its home planet and its natural satellite -- the moon.

"This is a remarkable sight people get to see all too rarely," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "This view of our planet shows how Earth looks from the outside, illustrating a special perspective of our role and place in the universe. We see a humbling yet beautiful view of ourselves."

The image was taken by the spacecraft's camera, JunoCam, on Aug. 26 when the spacecraft was about 6 million miles (9.66 million kilometers) away. The image was taken as part of the mission team's checkout of the Juno spacecraft. The team is conducting its initial detailed checks on the spacecraft's instruments and subsystems after its launch on Aug. 5.

Juno covered the distance from Earth to the moon (about 250,000 miles or 402,000 kilometers) in less than one day's time. It will take the spacecraft another five years and 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to complete the journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will orbit the planet's poles 33 times and use its eight science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, and look for a potential solid planetary core.

The solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT) on Aug. 5 to begin its five-year journey to Jupiter.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu . You can follow the mission on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nasajuno .

[jcm]

SpaceTrack released an orbit for the Centaur showing it in 13228 x 366146 km x 46.1 deg bound Earth orbit. Did it make a depletion burn that rebound it to the Earth
after spacecraft separation?  (at this stage could just be a SpaceTrack error, instead)

That doesn't look right. One of the ULA people in the interviews before launch said Centaur will basically be left on the same trajectory as Juno and that it will enter heliocentric orbit with a roughly 2 year period. It would only do some collision avoidance maneuvers after separation.

I doubt it had that much performance margin to burn back to Earth capture, they wouldn't have used 5 solids if it had.

OK thanks - that makes sense. Just a tracking error.

A picture is worth a thousand words, amateur* image of Juno and the Centaur on the way to the moon.

http://www.spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Scott-Ferguson-juno3framestakahashi2_1312616258.gif

Hmm... I'd rather have 7 floating point numbers than a picture :-)
In principle three pictures are worth a state vector, but they'd need smaller pixels I think.

horizons.jpl.nasa.gov now has the post-launch trajectory for Juno (but not for the Centaur).

[racshot65]

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Refines its Path to Jupiter

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-032

[apace]

What a nice made and inspiring website!
http://missionjuno.swri.edu/

[racshot65]

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Images Big Dipper

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-133

[peter-b]

Can anyone tell me what specific power the Juno arrays achieve, in W/kg? Thanks!