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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Science
Michael Slezak

Juno probe enters Jupiter's orbit following 'amazing' Nasa mission – as it happened

Nasa scientists celebrate as Juno probe successfully enters orbit around Jupiter

Well, what a day. What an achievement.

After a five year journey from Earth, Juno the solar-powered spacecraft squeezed through a narrow band, skimming Jupiter’s surface, avoiding the worst of both its radiation belt and its dangerous dust rings.

It fired its main engine, slowing its velocity, and allowing it to get captured into Jupiter’s hefty orbit.

After it was complete, jubilant scientists fronted a press conference, and tore up a “contingency communication strategy” they said they prepared in case things went wrong.

“To know we can go to bed tonight not worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow, is just amazing,” said Diane Brown, a project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Scott Bolton, principle investigator of the Juno mission told his colleagues: “You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing Nasa has ever done.”

Now the spacecraft will orbit the planet once every 53 days until October 14, when it will shift to a tighter 14-day orbit. And after about 20 months of learning everything it can about Jupiter’s interior and its atmosphere, it will eventually succumb to the harsh environment and plunge into the planet’s crushing centre.

But right now all that is ahead of us. We watch wide-eyed, eager to learn about the giant planet, and in doing so, learn more about how we all got here.

To find out more, you can check out the article below, or scroll through the rest of this liveblog to see the action, as it happened.

Updated

What the Juno mission will look like

The Juno mission will cost Nasa $1.1billion.

After an epic five year journey, where it slung-shot around the Earth to gather speed and travelled for 2.8bn kilometres, it will now circle Jupiter for 20 months, before plunging to a crushing death in Jupiter’s harsh and dense atmosphere.

Any reports we get from Juno actually happened 48 minutes and 19 seconds earlier – that’s how long it takes light to get from Juno to Earth. As a result, it gets sent directions ahead of time, and is flown essentially on auto-pilot.

Despite Juno’s sensitive electronics being encased in a one-inch thick solid titanium box to shield it from the intense radiation around Jupiter, eventually it will succumb to the harsh environment. At that time – currently estimated to be in about 20 months – it will be commanded to dive into the atmosphere.

But in that time, it will use it’s nine instruments to learn everything it can about Jupiter’s interior and atmosphere.

It will map Jupiter’s gravity and magnetic fields and track how much water is in the atmosphere. Its colour camera dubbed JunoCam will snap close-ups of Jupiter’s swirling clouds, polar regions and shimmering southern and northern lights.

Some of the things Juno will teach us (hopefully)

Juno itself is an amazing feat. It’s the first solar powered spacecraft to reach the outer planets. It’s one of the fastest spacecrafts ever made. And it has pulled-off an incredible and dangerous maneuver, entering orbit around the gas giant.

But the really amazing things will be the science it does as it orbits the planet.

One of the big questions is: what’s at the core of Jupiter? Scientists aren’t sure whether it started off as a rocky planetary core, which then gathered all the gas that today makes up most of the planet, or whether it formed from an unstable region in a gas cloud.

Another question scientists hope to answer is how much water is in the planet. For scientists, that’s a measure of how much oxygen there is – locked up as the O in H2O. Based on measurements made from Earth, there seems to be less oxygen on the planet than there is in other objects in that region of the solar system.

If there turns out to be lots of water – and so lots of oxygen – that would suggest the planet formed near the sun. If there is relatively little water, that would suggest it formed further out in the solar system, and migrated in.

How does that eye remain so stable? By diving below the clouds, Juno aims to map the structure and the motion of the atmosphere. That will help scientists see how deep the features we see on the surface penetrate, and figure out how they formed and why they remain for so long.

What we know so far

And now we’ve got up a story, summarising what’s happened so far.

After a five-year voyage across 1.8bn miles (2.8bn km), Nasa’s Juno spacecraft has reached Jupiter and successfully entered its orbit.

Braving intense radiation and a field of space rocks, the probe inched into the orbit of the largest planet in the solar system at 03.18 GMT.

The manoeuvre was extremely complex, with the craft first having to slow down and then turn off its engines to enter Jupiter’s orbit at exactly the right moment.

Juno’s success prompted joy at Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory, where team members had been watching the probe’s progress with bated breath.

“Juno, welcome to Jupiter,” said mission control commentator Jennifer Delavan of Lockheed Martin, which built Juno. In the background, scientists could be seen cheering, clapping and hugging each other.

“You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing Nasa has ever done,” said Scott Bolton, principle investigator of the Juno mission.

You can read the full story here:

About 400 years ago, Galileo discovered that some of the “stars” near Jupiter weren’t moving as expected. He figured out they were actually moons, orbiting Jupiter.

Until now, nobody had seen that system – like a mini solar system itself, almost – up close. But today Nasa released a spectacular video made up of still images taken by Juno as it approached Jupiter, showing the moons orbiting Jupiter.

Updated

More from the press conference.

Project Manager Rick Nybakken got theatrical at the press conference.

He said that before the final maneuver today, Nasa prepared a “contingency communications strategy” – what they would say to the public if things went wrong, presumably. He held that strategy up and tore it to pieces in front of the room.

“Juno sang,” he said. “And it was a song of perfection.”

Nasa scientists hold jubilant press conference

Nasa is holding a press conference now and we’ll bring you updates from it as it happens.

First up was Diane Brown, Juno’s project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said “It’s overwhelming.”

“The risks that were overcome, it’s amazing. The more you know about the mission the more you know about how tricky it was.”

“To know we can go to bed tonight not worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow, is just amazing,” she said.

Stay tuned for more...

The Juno spacecraft announced on Twitter that it had completed its twist, so that it was now facing the sun, soaking up the solar energy it needs to continue its missions.

As mentioned earlier, Scott Bolton, leader of the Nasa team behind the successful mission shouted: “You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing Nasa has ever done.”

And on Twitter, people seem to be agreeing with him.

And commenters on the blog here have been equally excited, congratulating the Nasa team.

User avatar for chico6y

Congratulations!
Very exciting event in human history.
One small step more into the future, for the future generations.

But so far there aren’t many updates coming in about whether the spacecraft has completed its turn, and is facing the sun again.

Nevertheless, Juno’s heartbeat seems to be kicking along quite nicely.

Earlier in the day, before Juno approached Jupiter, Scott Bolton said: “As you can tell it’s not easy for Nasa to get he answers that humanity is seeking here.” But now it looks like they’re much closer to doing so.

And now celebrations are rolling in from around the world. Google has got in on the action just now, updating its Google Doodle:

Over the next 40 minutes, Juno will spin down again from its current five rotations per minute, down to two. Then it will turn around to face the sun again, so it can recharge its batteries. After that it will switch on its main antenna, and it will start communicating properly with Earth. Nasa says locking into that signal from its main antenna could take 20 minutes or more.

Nasa has ended its coverage of the event but stay tuned and we’ll bring you the the last updates as Juno completes its final moves, reactions from people around the world and a final wrap-up of Nasa has achieved today.

“Welcome to jupiter”

“Welcome to jupiter,” a voice said over the radio at Nasa’s JPL, with scientists cheering, clapping and hugging each other.

The burn time was within one second of the predicted time, putting it in exactly the orbit it needed.

“You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing Nasa has ever done,” shouted, principle investigator of the Juno mission, Scott Bolton.

Juno successfully enters orbit around Jupiter!

Cheers have erupted in the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory control room as researchers hear a simple tone, revealing Juno’s main engine has switched off, and the spacecraft is in the planned orbit.

As far as we know now, Juno has completed one of the riskiest and most important parts of its very long mission!

Stay tuned for details and updates as they come in.

Now Juno will need to re-orient itself, so that it faces back towards the sun and collects the solar power it needs to continue on its mission.

“I’m a little more relaxed than when the burn started,” Scott Bolton says. Now he says he’s getting excited about getting some science.

The instruments, which have been turned off now, will be turned back on in a couple of days, but they won’t be properly used for another 53 days, when Juno passes the surface again.

Nasa says there is five minutes or less until this burn is complete but still, everything is going as planned.

The next milestone for Juno is in about 10 minutes, when the engine should turn off. It needs to burn for exactly the right amount of time, to get the spacecraft into exactly the right orbit. But with a 48 minute delay in signals getting from Juno to Earth, it has to all be done on auto-pilot.

Scott Bolton from the Juno team at Nasa said that now, assuming things have gone as planned, Juno is in orbit around Jupiter.

It still needs to slow down more so that it gets into the right orbit, but technically, it should now have been captured by Jupiter!

Juno passes Jupiter's equator

Right now, Juno is passing the equator of Jupiter. It’s about 4,500 km above the cloud tops – that’s the closest any spacecraft has come.

It also means that Juno has passed through one of the two risky regions of the radiation belt.

According to scientists at Nasa, everything so far seems to be going well. They’re recording a change in velocity as Juno slows down – again measured via the doppler effect.

If all goes well, that will continue for another 10 minutes or so.

Still, those Nasa scientists are looking pretty nervous.

Everyone’s eyes are on the tones coming in from Juno to the receivers around the world. What everyone is hoping for is simply to keep seeing the simple sine wave hitting those dishes. As long as that’s happening, Juno is still alive.

Main engine burn starts!

A simple tone has indicated Juno’s main engine has started to fire, slowing Juno, and beginning to put it into orbit.

Over a radio, scientists in the control room heard: “Yeah we see the expected sharp shift upwards in the doppler residuals indicating the engine has started.”

A small applause was heard in the control room. And now it’s a 35 minute wait to see how it goes!

Here’s what the Guardian’s editor Ian Sample said about the things that could go wrong during these 35 minutes:

But first the $1.1bn spacecraft has to arrive safely. Should the rocket burn end too soon or last too long, the mission will be thrown into jeopardy with the probe either failing to reach the right orbit or barrelling straight past the gas giant and onwards to the sun.

“There’s a mixture of tension and anxiety because this is such a critical manoeuvre and everything is riding on it. We have to get into orbit,” Bolton said. “The rocket motor has to burn at the right time, in the right direction, for just the right amount of time.”

A tense moment too, then, for staff at Moog Westcott in Buckinghamshire who built the engine. “The years of design, development, and rigorous technical scrutiny by a passionate and driven team, are defined in one 35-minute burn sequence,” said site manager Rob Selby. “The team here will be watching the Nasa feed with bated breath.”

As an aside, it’s worth noting that actually all this has already happened, since it takes 48 minutes for signals to travel from Juno back to Earth!

Updated

A bit of background while we nervously wait for the engine turn on: During this first pass that we’re about to see, what everyone is hoping for is just for Juno to survive. It’s a risky move, with its engine open as it passes through a region where there could be dust and rocks. But all the science instruments will be turned off.

After that, it will enter orbits that take about 53 days, with the instruments turned on. Those aren’t idea for the science mission, but it will save fuel and it will give the scientists lots of time between passes to learn how to interpret the data coming back, and to observe the planet.

Then, on October 14, the orbit will tighten to a 14-day orbit, allowing all the key science to get done.

Ok! Juno should now have completed the last move it needs to make, preparing to enter orbit. It has turned towards the planet and has increased the rate that it is rotating.

That should have taken about five minutes.

Now, in about 11 minutes, the spacecraft will fire its main engine, slowing its velocity by about 540 meters per second. Doing that will take about 35 minutes.

Fingers crossed!

Things are getting pretty exciting! In about four minutes, Juno will complete its final maneuver before the main thrusters are hit. It is starting to spin the spacecraft a bit faster, to keep it more stable as it enters orbit. It will increase from rotating at about two revolutions per minute to about five revolutions per minute.

Nasa scientists are able to confirm the speed it is spinning using the doppler effect.

After that happens, the last thing to do is to fire the main engine and enter orbit!

Updated

First rotation done

Just in: Nasa has confirmed the first rotation of the Juno spacecraft has been completed successfully.

Updated

As an aside, there has been a little bit of disagreement about whether Juno will be the fastest spacecraft ever.

In a press conference today, some Nasa scientists suggested that it would be. But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says this isn’t true... I’ll leave it up to them to fight out the details!

The perils Juno will face

What Nasa’s Juno spacecrat will have to do to avoid complete destruction is quite spectacular.

Around the giant planet are massive radiation belts. Accelerated to almost the speed of light by Jupiter’s massive magnetic field, electrons whiz through the belt, threatening to fry any electrical equipment that crosses their path.

In addition, Jupiter has rings around it, full of dust and rocks – the precise make-up of which is still a mystery.

Avoiding that radiation and the dust completely is impossible. But Nasa has planned a trip that avoid as much of them as possible. So Juno will slip through a narrow area very close to the planet.

That path will allow it to avoid the very worst of the radiation, but as you can see, it will still pass through intense radiation, indicated in orange above. It will hit that at both the north and the south of the planet. That will be an intense 35 minutes!

Updated

According to the timeline, Juno’s slow burn should now have begun. That should get Juno facing away from the sun. That means it won’t be able to soak up much more solar energy, but it will be positioned so that it can slow its descent into orbit.

Updated

If you want to check out the “tone” being sent back by Juno – what some are calling its “heartbeat” – you can see it live here on Nasa’s Deep Space Network Now website. It’s how Nasa is keeping tabs on Juno.

The tone is being received by several receivers around the world including one in Goldstone in the US and one in Canberra in Australia.

If you’ve only just come across the Juno mission, here’s some useful info from the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample:

Five years and 1.8bn miles into its voyage, Nasa’s Juno spacecraft is about to slam on its brakes and fall into orbit around the vast, cloud-striped planet of Jupiter.

With all but the most essential equipment switched off for the critical manoeuvre, Juno will turn away from the sun and fire its main engine at 4.18am Tuesday UK time. All being well, the 35-minute burn will slow the spacecraft to 130,000mph and allow it to be captured by the planet’s immense gravitational field.

“The whole team is really excited that we’re finally arriving at Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s lead investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We’ve been waiting for a really long time and finally it’s coming.”

Bristling with instruments, Juno will peer deep beneath Jupiter’s clouds to learn how the planet formed; what drives its brilliant aurorae; and how its complex weather systems produce the giant red spot and the swirling, enigmatic stripes that decorate its outer layers.

The planet formed from an enormous gas cloud 4.5bn years ago under the feeble light of the newborn sun. The material leftover became the rest of the planets, the asteroids and the comets. All would fit easily within the bulk of Jupiter, a planet 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive.

“The primary goal is to understand the recipe for how you make a solar system,” Bolton said. “What we can tell from our instruments can help us learn how planets formed in the first place.”

Read more of Ian’s story here:

For a bit of background, why not check out this dramatic video made by Nasa, explaining the Juno mission, what it aims to achieve, and the hurdles it will face on its way.

Updated

What to expect now

Ok, as we wait for more information from Juno’s descent, here’s a bit about what to expect.

The key event will happen at 8.18pm on the West Coast of the US, 3:18am in Greenwich Meantime, or 1:18pm in Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Right now, Juno is slowly turning away from the sun, so that its engine will be facing in the right direction when it needs to slow its descent.

Here’s the timeline of events, according to Nasa:

  • -125 minutes Begin transmitting tones; Switch telecom to Medium Gain Antenna
  • -122 minutes Begin slow, first turn of 15 degrees away from the sun, toward the JOI attitude
  • -50 minutes Begin fast, large turn to JOI attitude
  • -37 minutes Switch to Toroidal Low Gain Antenna
  • -33 minutes Begin “nutation damping” activity to remove remaining wobble
  • -28 minutes Begin fine-tune adjustment of the JOI attitude
  • -22 minutes Begin approx. 5-minute spin-up from 2 RPM to 5 RPM
  • 20.18pm PDT (03:18 GMT or 1:18pm AEST) Start 35-minute main engine burn
  • +35 minutes Close propulsion pressurant valves
  • +37 minutes Begin approx. 5-minute spin-down from 5 RPM to 2 RPM; (Items below may begin earlier, if the spin down and/or turn complete sooner)
  • +49 minutes Begin turn to sun-pointed attitude
  • +53 minutes Switch telecom to Medium Gain Antenna (tones no longer received)
  • +58 minutes Begin transmitting telemetry (team expects it will take 20 minutes or more to lock onto Juno’s telemetry signal)

Opening summary

A solar powered spacecraft, about the size of a basketball court, is hurtling towards Jupiter, about to fire its engines to slow its descent and enter orbit around the gas giant.

Called Juno, the spacecraft plans to peer below Jupiter’s dense cover of clouds for the first time – and live to tell the tale.

Since August 2011, Juno has been flying towards Jupiter. And in the last hour, it has begun its final manoeuvres before it inserts itself into the planet’s harsh orbit.

It has now begun sending back single frequency tones, letting the team at Nasa know how it’s doing.

And over the next two hours, it will change its direction, start to spin a bit faster and then blast its main rockets, slowing its pace so that it can be captured into Jupiter’s orbit.

It will face a series of incredible hurdles as it does that. It must slip between bands of intense radiation and rings of rocks and dust. While it fires its main engines, they will be exposed to anything it encounters, threatening to blast a hole in the surfaces that allow them to keep firing.

Stay tuned over the next few hours as we follow this historic mission through the clouds of the solar system’s biggest planet.

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