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Following a 'Tweetup,' NASA to Launch First Solar-Powered Probe, Bound for Jupiter

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August 02, 2011

Following a 'Tweetup,' NASA to Launch First Solar-Powered Probe, Bound for Jupiter

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

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NASA's latest sortie into the solar system is set to become the most distant probe ever powered by the Sun. The robotic explorer Juno—scheduled for takeoff from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Friday, August 5, is a solar-powered, windmill-shaped spacecraft.


And to show just how neoteric NASA has become, the agency has invited 150 followers of its Twitter (News - Alert) account to a two-day Tweetup, August 4 through August 5, to share their prelaunch experiences via the social networking site. The attendees—randomly selected from more than 1,200 online applicants— represent 28 states, the District of Columbia, and five other countries: Canada, Finland, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The Tweetup will culminate when the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft, aboard an unmanned Atlas V rocket, blasts off— barely two weeks after NASA's final space shuttle flight.

Juno is equipped with three tractor-trailer-size solar panels for its 2 billion-mile, $1.1. billion journey to the largest and probably oldest planet in the solar system. Each of Juno's three wings is 29 feet long and 9 feet wide, necessary given that Jupiter receives 25 percent less sunlight than Earth. The panels —folded for launch — emanate from the spacecraft much like the blades of a windmill.

At Jupiter, nearly 500 million miles from the sun, Juno's panels will provide 400 watts of power. In orbit around Earth, these panels would generate 35 times as much power. Juno will go into an oval-shaped orbit around Jupiter's poles in July 2016.

The craft will fly within 3,100 miles of the dense cloud tops, nearer than any previous spacecraft. Any closer and Juno would feel the tug of the planet's atmosphere, which in turn would alter the spacecraft's orbiting path and hamper its gravity experiment.

The spinning spacecraft will circle the planet for at least a year, beaming back data that should help explain the composition of its mysterious insides. Each orbit will last 11 days, for a total of 33 orbits covering 348 million miles.

Nine instruments are on board, including JunoCam, a wide-angle color camera, which will beam back images.

This represents the first of three high-profile astronomy missions coming up for NASA in the next four months. Jupiter — a planet several NASA spacecraft have studied before — is so vast it could hold everything else in the solar system, minus the Sun. Scientists hope to learn more about planetary origins through Juno's exploration of the giant gas-filled planet, a body far different from rocky Earth and Mars.

"Look at it this way — it is a new era," said a man whose last name could not be more appropriate for this mission: Jim Green, NASA's director of Planetary Science. "Humans plan to go beyond low-Earth orbit. When we do that, it's not like 'Star Trek.' It's not 'go where no man has gone before.'"

Plunging deeper into space will require robotic scouts first, he said.

Southwest Research Institute Astrophysicist Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator, said it's also important for people to realize "NASA's not going out of business."

"If we're going to learn who we are and where we came from, and how the Earth works, we've got to keep doing these science missions, not just Juno," Bolton said.

NASA's long-range blueprint would have astronauts reach an asteroid by 2025 and Earth's next-door neighbor Mars a decade later, although there's still uncertainty surrounding the rockets needed for the job. A Juno success would be a good sign for future solar-powered missions of all types.

Jupiter may be just two planets over, but it's far enough away to be considered the outer solar system.

It will take Juno five years to reach its target, five times farther from the Sun than Earth. No spacecraft has ever ventured so far, powered by solar wings. Europe's solar-powered, comet-chasing Rosetta probe made it as far as the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The choice of solar was a practical one, Bolton said. No plutonium-powered generators were available to him and his San Antonio-based team nearly a decade ago, so they opted for solar panels rather than develop a new nuclear source. They wanted to avoid ballooning costs and possible delays connected with developing new technologies.

"It's nice to be green, but it wasn't because we were afraid of the plutonium," Bolton explained.

Indeed, NASA's six-wheeled, Jeep-size Mars rover named Curiosity, due to launch in late November, will be powered by more than 10 pounds of plutonium. Despite safety efforts, there's always the question of public safety if an explosion occurred.

NASA's Grail mission — twin spacecraft to be launched next month to Earth's moon — employs solar panels.

Eight robotic craft already have flown to or near Jupiter and its many moons, as far back as the 1970s: NASA's Voyagers and Pioneers, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini and, most recently in 2007, the Pluto-bound New Horizons.

Once its work is done in 2017, Juno will make a kamikaze dive into Jupiter. NASA doesn't want the spacecraft hanging around and crashing into Europa or other moons, possibly contaminating them for future generations of explorers.


Cheryl Kaften is an accomplished communicator who has written for consumer and corporate audiences. She has worked extensively for MasterCard (News - Alert) Worldwide, Philip Morris USA (Altria), and KPMG, and has consulted for Estee Lauder and the Philadelphia Inquirer Newspapers. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves

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