Three solar panels are like the blades of a windmill. However, in contrast to the spinning windmill to generate electricity, solar panels mounted on the Juno spacecraft will capture and convert sunlight into electricity 400 watts.
Electric power will be used by the Juno, which was launched on an unmanned Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, August 5, 2011, for a mission to Jupiter. Capitalize solar panel size tractor trailer or truck to supply the energy needed while traveling 3.2 billion miles to the outer solar system, Juno will be the farthest vehicle investigator who uses sunlight as an energy source.
The decision to choose the sun as an energy source Juno actually happened by accident, more for practical reasons rather than reasons for eco-friendly. A decade ago, there was no plutonium-fueled generators are available for the Scott Bolton and his team in San Antonio, so they chose solar panels rather than developing expensive new nuclear resources and potentially delay the completion of the ride because they have to develop new technologies.
"Nice to be 'green', but it's not because we were afraid to use the plutonium," says astrophysicist Southwest Research Institute, Scott Bolton, who was involved in the manufacture of the spacecraft.
The courage demonstrated using radioactive elements at the source of energy used Curiosity NASA Mars spacecraft, which will be launched in November 2011, the Laboratory science runs it will use 4.5 pounds of plutonium as an energy source.
The use of plutonium is often feared would endanger public safety if there was an explosion. Another NASA mission, the Grail, which consists of two twin spacecraft to be launched to the moon in September 2011, using solar panels as an energy source.
Each wing of the three solar panels Juno length 8.8 meters and 2.7 meters wide. The third wing is very necessary because Jupiter only receives sunlight 25 times lower than Earth.
Solar panels, which folded at launch, sticking out of the craft such as windmill blades, arrival at Jupiter, nearly 800 million kilometers from the sun, the solar panels that will provide electricity for the Juno of 400 watts. The number is very small because when orbiting around the Earth, such panels can generate power by 35 fold.
The launch of the solar-powered vehicle was only two weeks after the shuttle flight NASA last. Retirement of the shuttle gives extra attraction on the way to the largest planet, and it is likely the oldest in the solar system. Programs worth U.S. $ 1.1 billion it is the mission's first of three missions to be carried NASA's astronomy in the next four months.
After several NASA spacecraft sent to study the planet, the researchers hope to find out the origin of the giant planet through exploration Juno. Jupiter, which is formed from the gas, is very different from Earth or Mars, which is formed from rocks.
Before Juno went to Jupiter, eight robotic spacecraft ever flown, or close to Jupiter and the rows of the moon, which amounts to 64 , since 1970. Start vehicle Voyagers and Pioneers, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini, to New Horizons, which passed the planet in 2007, when the vehicle is going to dwarf planet Pluto.
"This is a new era," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science. "Humans are planning to travel beyond low Earth orbit. When we do, the trip was not like 'Star Trek', do not go to a place that has never been visited by humans before."
Bolton, who is also principal investigator of Juno, says the mission is very important to prove that NASA continue as usual after the end of the shuttle. "If we will learn who we are and where we came from, and how the Earth works, we must continue to perform science missions like this, not just Juno," Bolton said.
In a blueprint for the work program of NASA, the space agency will send astronauts reach the asteroid in 2025, also to the Earth's planetary neighbor, Mars, the next decade, although overshadowed by uncertainty about the rocket that will be used to carry out the mission. Juno's success would be a good sign for all types of missions that use solar power in the future.
From Earth, Jupiter is limited only by the planet Mars, but the planet is pretty much so it is also classified as an outer solar system. It took five years for Juno to achieve its goals, five times farther from the sun than Earth.
There has never been a solar-powered spacecraft to explore that far. Rosetta furthest journey, solar-powered spacecraft's comet hunters of Europe, only reaching the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Juno, which is taken from the name of the wife of the Roman god, Jupiter, will orbit in an oval shape at the poles sekitat Jupiter in July 2016, having traveled as far as 2.8 billion miles.
The craft will fly into the thick clouds that blanketed peaks Jupiter 5,000 kilometers deep, far closer than previous spacecraft. When you fly closer, Juno will feel the atmosphere of the planet's gravity, which will change the orbital path and inhibit gravitational experiments.
Spacecraft that will be circling around Jupiter for a year. Juno will send data to help explain the composition of the planet's mysterious. Each orbit will last for 11 days. Thus, of 33 orbits to be done, Juno would travel 560 million kilometers.
To support its mission, Juno is equipped with nine instruments, including JunoCam, a wide-angle camera that will transmit pictures of the poles and Jupiter's cloud tops in three wavelengths of red, green, and blue for the researchers studied on Earth.
Juno electronic devices are most sensitive inside a titanium dome to protect it from radiation around the planet's incredible. Exposure to radiation will be worse at the end of the mission. "Basically, we sent an armored tank to Jupiter," said Bolton.
Scientists believe Jupiter formed from most of the period remaining from the formation of the sun. That's what makes Jupiter is very interesting. By identifying the composition of the planet, other than hydrogen and helium gas, the astronomers hope to explain more accurately how a solar system is created.
"We wanted to find a list of all the elements that make up the planet," said Bolton. "What we are hunting is actually a recipe to make the planet."
To answer that question, Juno will study Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields, including the atmosphere is filled with thick and turbulent clouds, which can produce winds of 480 kilometers per hour and huricane doubled the size of the earth. This experiment will also investigate the water content and oxygen in Jupiter's atmosphere, and help determine whether the planet's core is solid or gas.
Having completed his job in 2017, Juno would be "suicide" by crashing into Jupiter. NASA does not want to ride it drifted aimlessly and crashed into Jupiter's moon Europa or the other, as well as contaminating the satellite there is a possibility that one day visited by the next generation of explorers. *** [TJANDRA DEWI | AP | NASA | SPACE | KORAN TEMPO 3614]
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