Friday, December 4, 2015

Next July 4, the Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter

I refer you to this NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory news post:

"To Jupiter with JunoCam!"

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2015-363&rn=news.xml&rst=4783

and the JunoCam page at Juno Mission portal:

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam


"...We’re calling all amateur astronomers to upload their telescopic images and data of Jupiter. These uploads are critical for the upcoming Discussion section (coming this fall) and will help NASA successfully plan the future of the mission...

"In between our close Jupiter flybys, Juno goes far from the planet, and Jupiter will shrink in JunoCam's field of view to a size too small to be useful for choosing which features to capture. So we really are counting on having help from ground-based observers," said Candy Hansen, a member of the Juno science team who leads planning for the camera.

Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any previous orbiting spacecraft, giving JunoCam the best close-up views yet of the planet's colorful cloud bands. Every 14 days, the spinning, solar-powered spacecraft will dive past the planet in just a couple of hours, gathering huge amounts of science data, plus about a dozen JunoCam images. At closest approach, Juno will snap photos from only 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above Jupiter's clouds...."