The leading camera studying Jupiter has struggled as usual to take pictures in two consecutive flybys.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 Jupiter 2016. Since then, he has passed the largest planets on Earth nearly 50 times. solar system A rare aspect of Jupiter’s large moon has been captured. Each is its own strange world. But on Jan. 22, the spacecraft’s most recent flyby, the cameras were only able to capture about one-fifth of the planned images.
a I had a similar issue on my last flybyin December; mission personnel believe the camera failure was caused by the camera reaching an unusually high temperature, and continue to troubleshoot the issue. statement.
Related: Jupiter’s true colors appear in new images from NASA’s Juno mission
Shortly after the Dec. 14 flyby, Juno experienced a memory problem that put the rover into safe mode and delayed data transmission. earthaccording to, statement at the time. Juno bounced smoothly and most of the data reached Earth safely, but Juno Kam struggled early in the flyby.
The camera was instructed to capture 90 images during the December flyby, but the first four shots failed. The mission team determined that when the JunoCam was powered on, the temperature rose to the point where photography was compromised, and the equipment had cooled by the end of his first four images.
However, according to NASA, it appears the problem has returned, this time after 23 hours instead of 36 minutes. This time, a glitch prevented him from using 214 images, and only 44 good images of him were returned after the device had cooled sufficiently.
“The mission team is evaluating JunoCam engineering data acquired from two recent flybys (missions 47 and 48) to investigate the root cause of the anomaly and mitigation strategies,” said a NASA official. is writing “The JunoCam will remain powered on for the time being and the camera will continue to operate normally.”
Juneau’s next flyby will occur on March 1st.
Because the rover’s scientific goals didn’t require such equipment, mission officials considered launching Juno without a camera, but the agency decided to add one. Junocam as a public project. A color camera will take pictures of Jupiter’s dynamic cloud tops, suggest where to aim for the public, and process the collected images.
And according to NASA, the JunoCam wasn’t guaranteed to last this long. It was designed to survive just seven passes through the treacherous environment surrounding Jupiter.
Juno itself is also operating beyond its primary mission, which ended in July 2021. It is currently expected to last until September 2025.
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