Excellent news! NASA’s Jupiter explorer Juno’s reminiscence is again on-line, and a lot of the treasured photographs of the gas giant and its volcanic moon Io the probe took simply earlier than that glitch hit have been salvaged.
Juno gave its operators somewhat headache after its reminiscence, filled with priceless photographs of Jupiter and its mysterious volcanic moon Io, turned inaccessible simply earlier than a detailed cross Juno product of the 2 our bodies in mid-December.
However all is properly now, NASA announced on Tuesday (opens in new tab) (Jan. 10), and beautiful views of each Jupiter and Io are flowing down from Juno to NASA’s ground-based management facilities.
The anomaly within the laptop system that shops Juno’s knowledge was first detected on Dec. 14, one day earlier than Juno’s first shut glimpse of Io. At the moment, NASA saved the data beneath wraps, however because the company revealed later, on Dec. 17, solely two days after the Io imaging campaign, the whole probe was put into protecting secure mode, with solely probably the most important methods powered on.
NASA has now revealed that, since Dec. 29, Juno has been totally again on, with its reminiscence largely intact.
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“As anticipated, the vast majority of the science knowledge collected in the course of the flyby (together with all knowledge associated to Jupiter’s moon Io) was efficiently obtained, and solely a small portion was corrupted by the anomaly,” NASA stated within the Tuesday assertion. “Instrument restoration actions are actually full, and the spacecraft is functioning nominally. Juno’s subsequent flyby of Jupiter will happen on Sunday, Jan. 22.”
Juno makes periodic swing-bys simply 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) or so above the tops of Jupiter’s thick, swirling clouds. The pc glitch occurred simply because the probe was making its forty seventh shut method to the planet, which led engineers to consider that the sturdy magnetic fields surrounding Jupiter might have been accountable for the issue.
The restoration operation concerned rebooting Juno’s onboard laptop on Dec. 17 and a gradual restoration of the reminiscence downlink.
“The rest of the science knowledge collected in the course of the flyby is anticipated to be despatched all the way down to Earth over the subsequent week, and the well being of the information can be verified at the moment,” NASA stated within the assertion.
Juno, which launched atop an Atlas V rocket in August 2011, has been orbiting the biggest planet of the solar system since July 2016. The solar-powered probe efficiently concluded its main mission in July 2021, notching many achievements, together with the invention of a dynamic atmospheric climate layer extending past the clouds and figuring out that Jupiter has a strange oversized core of diluted heavy elements.
Juno’s prolonged mission, which is anticipated to run by to 2025, will focus extra intently on the 4 massive Galilean moons of Jupiter: the ice-covered Ganymede, Europa and Callisto that harbor probably liveable subsurface oceans, and Io, probably the most volcanic physique within the solar system.
The probe will carry out a total of 9 flybys of Io within the coming 12 months, buying high-resolution photographs of the magma-encrusted world for the primary time. Two of those flybys will take Juno inside simply 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of Io’s floor.
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