#Altadena

91001tv

10 years ago

2274 Digital Networks

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10 years ago

Apple Working On Electric Car: WSJ

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10 years ago

#MyLife

Two New Missions to Explore the Early Solar System

We’ve got big science news…!

We’ve just added two more science missions to our lineup! The two selected missions have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 millions years after the birth of our sun.

The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation.

Let’s take a dive into each mission…

Lucy

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids. Scheduled to launch in October 2021, the spacecraft is slated to arrive at its first destination, a main asteroid belt, in 2025.

Then, from 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

Studying these Trojan asteroids will give us valuable clues to deciphering the history of the early solar system.

Psyche

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. The asteroid measures about 130 miles in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, it is thought to be comprised of mostly metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core.

Scientists wonder whether psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers early in their histories. The Psyche robotic mission is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.

Get even more information about these two new science missions HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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8 years ago

Juno: Inside the Spacecraft

Our Juno spacecraft was carefully designed to meet the tough challenges in flying a mission to Jupiter: weak sunlight, extreme temperatures and deadly radiation. Lets take a closer look at Juno:

It Rotates!

Roughly the size of an NBA basketball court, Juno is a spinning spacecraft. Cartwheeling through space makes the spacecraft’s pointing extremely stable and easy to control. While in orbit at Jupiter, the spinning spacecraft sweeps the fields of view of its instruments through space once for each rotation. At three rotations per minute, the instruments’ fields of view sweep across Jupiter about 400 times in the two hours it takes to fly from pole to pole.

It Uses the Power of the Sun

Jupiter’s orbit is five times farther from the sun than Earth’s, so the giant planet receives 25 times less sunlight than Earth. Juno will be the first solar-powered spacecraft we’ve designed to operate at such a great distance from the sun. Because of this, the surface area of the solar panels required to generate adequate power is quite large.

Three solar panels extend outward from Juno’s hexagonal body, giving the overall spacecraft a span of about 66 feet. Juno benefits from advances in solar cell design with modern cells that are 50% more efficient and radiation tolerant than silicon cells available for space missions 20 years ago. Luckily, the mission’s power needs are modest, with science instruments requiring full power for only about six out of each 11-day orbit.

It Has a Protective Radiation Vault

Juno will avoid Jupiter’s highest radiation regions by approaching over the north, dropping to an altitude below the planet’s radiation belts, and then exiting over the south. To protect sensitive spacecraft electronics, Juno will carry the first radiation shielded electronics vault, a critical feature for enabling sustained exploration in such a heavy radiation environment.

Juno Science Payload:

Gravity Science and Magnetometers – Will study Jupiter’s deep structure by mapping the planet’s gravity field and magnetic field.

Microwave Radiometer – Will probe Jupiter’s deep atmosphere and measure how much water (and hence oxygen) is there.

JEDI, JADE and Waves – These instruments will work to sample electric fields, plasma waves and particles around Jupiter to determine how the magnetic field is connected to the atmosphere, and especially the auroras (northern and southern lights).

JADE and JEDI

Waves

UVS and JIRAM – Using ultraviolet and infrared cameras, these instruments will take images of the atmosphere and auroras, including chemical fingerprints of the gases present.

UVS