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Juno

NASA launched the Juno spacecraft in 2011 on a mission to report Jupiter, and now the spacecraft is almost to its target. Earlier information technology reaches the gas giant, Juno has already fabricated history as it sets the distance tape for solar power. No other spacecraft has relied upon solar panels for power at a greater distance from the sunday, an of import milestone as humanity plans more than deep space exploration.

Juno broke the tape on Wednesday, January 13th, when it passed the 492 million marking gear up by the ESA's Rosetta mission. You might retrieve all the bug surrounding the Philae lander'south solar panels after information technology detached from Rosetta. Information technology landed in a shady spot on the comet 67P's surface that express its exposure to sunlight. Lacking sufficient energy, Phillae had to shut downwards until it was closer to the sunday. That really illustrates how complicated solar power tin be once yous become out there.

The Juno probe is weighs in at 4 tons and has three solar panel arrays, each one 9 meters long. The panels take a total surface area of 261 square anxiety, composed of nearly 19,000 individual cells. That makes it the largest solar panel array ever built, merely information technology besides has some cool technology to make the most of that surface area. The cells accept multiple layers that absorb light in unlike parts of the spectrum for college power generation. In globe orbit, Juno is capable of producing 14 kilowatts. When it gets to Jupiter, it will just receive four% equally much sunlight. The maximum energy output there will be 486 watts, and that will come up down to about 420 watts by the end of the mission every bit radiation damages the panels.

juno solar panel test

Testing Juno's solar panels.

Past deep space missions similar New Horizons, Voyager, and Cassini used radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) for power, only the plutonium-238 isotope needed for these devices has been in short supply. NASA simply restarted production of plutonium in 2013. The shortage and advances in solar console engineering science made solar-powered missions a more viable option in recent years, and that may continue beingness the case in some instances. Future exploration of Europa might rely on similar solar panel technology for part of the journey.

Juno is expected to attain Jupiter orbit in July of this year. At that bespeak it will gear up to work analyzing the powerful gravitational and magnetic fields of the solar organization's largest planet. NASA believes this data volition reveal much most Jupiter'due south internal construction and evolution. We might finally know for sure if there's a solid core hiding nether all that gas. The mission duration is expected to be xx months, at which fourth dimension the probe will be de-orbited into Jupiter's atmosphere to avoid the possibility of impacting and contaminating any of its moons.