Juno slingshots past Earth on its way to Jupiter

[bananas]

Source: University of Iowa

Spacecraft with UI instrument makes closest Earth encounter Oct. 9

If you've ever whirled a ball attached to a string around your head and then let it go, you know the great speed that can be achieved through a slingshot maneuver.

Similarly, NASA's Juno spacecraft will be passing within some 350 miles of Earth's surface Wednesday, Oct. 9, before it slingshots off into space on a historic exploration of Jupiter.

It's all part of a scientific investigation that began with an August 2011 launch. The mission will begin in earnest when Juno arrives at Jupiter in July 2016. Bill Kurth, University of Iowa research scientist and lead investigator for one of Juno’s nine scientific instruments, the Waves instrument, says that the two years spent moving outward past the orbit of Mars before swinging past the Earth makes the trip to Jupiter possible.

”Juno will be really smoking as it passes Earth at a speed of about 25 miles per second relative to the sun. But it will need every bit of this speed to get to Jupiter for its July 4, 2016 capture into polar orbit about Jupiter,” says Kurth, who has been involved with the mission since the beginning. “The first half of its journey has been simply to set up this gravity assist with Earth.”

“One of Juno’s activities during the Earth flyby will be to make a movie of the Earth-moon system that will be the first to show Earth spinning on its axis from a distance,” says Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the Juno mission from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

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Read more: http://now.uiowa.edu/2013/09/juno-slingshots-past-earth-its-way-jupiter

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The Juno website is http://missionjuno.swri.edu/

[bananas]

1. Moon imaging happens first, at about 4 AM PDT on October 9 ...

From http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2548&view=findpost&p=203600

http://missionjuno.swri.edu/media-gallery now contains a little information about the Junocam EFB images and says that all of the images will be posted there on October 10th.

To give a bit more detail than that site has: the Junocam EFB activity is split up into four categories: Moon imaging, dayside Earth imaging, nightside Earth imaging, and other imaging. The Moon imaging happens first, at about 4 AM PDT on October 9. Since Juno will be fairly far from the Moon, it will be very small in these images (about 30 pixels across.) The dayside Earth imaging starts at about noon PDT and lasts about 20 minutes until the spacecraft passes from day to night. In this segment, we expect to see South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean. Now over the nightside, the spacecraft makes its closest approach over southern Africa, and we will take three images trying to see the lights of the major cities of South Africa, the islands of Reunion and Mauritius east of Madagascar, and finally, the nightside limb of the Earth at about 12:30. The last image of the sequence is a dark image looking for radiation effects as Juno passes through the inner Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the Earth. There are 17 images total, 6 RGB and 11 monochrome in various bands.

[munster69]

2. There is a ham radio experiment tied to this event

Transmitting all together HI in Morse code. Its a test for Juno's detection instruments.

http://www.arrl.org/news/ham-radio-community-invited-to-say-hi-to-juno-spacecraft

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Republican shutdown is shutting down radio telescopes. nt

[Nihil]

5. Fortunately, the rest of the world is still sentient. (n/t)

[onehandle]

4. RUN!!!!!

Kidding.

Cool stuff.