Juno - New American Space Project
5 August, in the morning, in the USA there was a launch of a carrier rocket, which is launching a new American program on space exploration. So, from the Kennedy Space Center, located on Cape Canaveral in Florida, the Atlas launch vehicle was launched with a new space laboratory. This lab will fly to the largest planet in the solar system - Jupiter. According to official information, the flight should last about five years.
The Juno spacecraft is one of the most technically advanced and expensive projects of all those scientific projects that existed before. The project cost is 1 100 million US dollars, the duration of the flight is about 5 years. The ship's laboratory is located on board the Atlas-5 launch vehicle. This is the most powerful of all the missiles that exist today.
Eight years of hard work was spent on the construction of a spacecraft. Approximately five minutes after the rocket enters space, the ship will separate and deploy the three huge wings of solar cells. On the energy of these batteries Juno should fly to Jupiter.
Why precisely Jupiter?
The principal investigator for the project at the Southwestern Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, Scott Bolton explains that a flight to Jupiter offers hope of unraveling the mystery of the origin of the solar system. Jupiter, as the researcher suggests, formed first. This planet is the largest of all. The mass of Jupiter is greater than all the planets in the solar system combined. Suppose that if we take all the planets with satellites of the solar system, with the exception of the Sun, then they will all fit inside Jupiter. In this regard, scientists want to know why this is so, the researcher says.
Journey is full of symbolism
Juno spacecraft must fly to Jupiter somewhere in the middle of July 2016. Roman mythology says that Jupiter is a god of thunder, and Juno (from English Juno) is his spouse. At the request of one of the school's scientific societies, on the ship, besides instruments, there are three figurines - these are miniature figures of the goddess Juno, the god Jupiter and Galileo Galilei.
Galileo first discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter. Jupiter, the thunder god, closed his planet with thick clouds to hide his love affairs from his wife. Juno - Juno - was able to see everything through the clouds. Thus, the figure of Galileo holds a telescope in his hands, and in Jupiter, lightning and a magnifying glass are in Juno's hands.
At the time of arrival at the place of Juno should include 5 brake rockets and go into the polar orbit of Jupiter. During the year Juno will make a 33 turn around Jupiter. Using instruments installed on board Juno, scientists want to find out more about the origin of the planet, its internal structure, atmosphere, map the magnetic field, find out whether Jupiter has a solid core.
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