Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Juno Reaches Jupiter!

Episode Date: July 12, 2016

Return with us to the evening of July 4, 2016 and the exciting arrival at Jupiter of the Juno orbiter. You’ll hear the moment of successful orbital insertion. Several of the mission’s key contributors reveal how Juno accomplished this feat, along with what they hope the spacecraft will tell us about the giant planet.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Juno reaches Jupiter, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. And what an adventure we have for you this week. Join me at JPL for the thrilling, nerve-wracking, and ultimately triumphant arrival of the Juno spacecraft on July 4th. You'll hear the tension and the celebration. Just as importantly, we'll talk with several of the men and women on the Juno team about how this was achieved and what to expect next. Our special coverage begins now.

achieved, and what to expect next. Our special coverage begins now. Folks, if I can ask you to step this way once you get your bag, can you join the group this way? More than a thousand people came to the Jet Propulsion Lab on that 4th of July. They included members of the Juno team, their loved ones, young and old, a few celebrities and VIPs, and a large contingent of media reps like me. Among the VIPs was Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. Describe the scene. There's a lot of people here. A lot of people are here on the 4th of July. They're not home barbecuing or carrying on.

They're here for the orbital insertion of the Juno spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter, and I'm invested in this mission. I was there at the launch August 5th, 2011 and it's been almost five years to get out to Jupiter. I did a series of videos for Scott Bolton and I'm very excited about this. This is another thing I got to tell you, it's all in when you count the rocket. It's over a billion dollars.

But that's over five years of flying. There's a couple more years of mission. And there were five or ten years before that planning this thing. It's not that much money per year per taxpayer. And it's very reasonable that we will make discoveries that have to do with the origin of the solar system and therefore the origin of you and me. And that is exciting. Jupiter's huge. It's huge. It's very big. It's massive.

Why didn't it fall into the sun? We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure it out. Let me look at my watch. Two and a half hours. The rocket starts to burn. Big, big fun. Big excitement. So you guys, the rocket motor has been in the icy blackness of space for five years. Would you go out to your car after you let it sit in the winter for five years and expect it to start? No, you probably wouldn't. But here at Rocket Science at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we fully expect the thing to turn on and work

just beautifully. If you get one of those premier memberships, will the Auto Club help you out at Jupiter? Well, I hope they're not needed. You're getting to me, Matt. I'm starting to feel the tension. It's exciting. Not far from the JPL visitors' entrance, scores of reporters from around the world and working in every medium, including virtual reality, were camped out in the media center. Among them, no surprise, was the Planetary Society's senior editor, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, we're about two hours away from either getting really tragic news or much more likely really good news. Would you put it that way? I would put it that way. That's really the only two possible outcomes that we can have today.

Either it goes into orbit, and as long as it's in some orbit, they will be able to make a great mission out of this mission. And if it doesn't go into orbit, they're never coming back to Jupiter. I'm counting on a celebration. And much of that will happen, well, first it'll happen in Mission Control and all the other rooms all over JPL where people have gathered this evening. But then it's going to come here for the big press conference. There's going to be a lot of media here really excited to hear the news.

You know, it's funny because media are supposed to remain cool, not applaud at press conferences, but you know there's going to be a little celebration if they get into orbit. So much history has happened in this facility and even in this room, von Karman Auditorium. You've been here for a lot of it, haven't you? I've been here for a great many pre and post launch landing arrival press briefings. I always have to pay homage to the gigantic model of Voyager that's in the back. I don't know if it's Voyager 1 or Voyager 2. It stands in for both of them. And it's really the spacecraft that kind of paved the way into the outer solar system for so many of these wonderful missions. And still paving. That's a good point. It's now paving the way beyond the

solar system for a path for blazed for hopefully very many spacecraft to follow. Of course, by the time people hear this, by the time I edit it, we'll know whether it was good news or bad news. But even so, give us an idea of what the spacecraft is up to now. Well, the spacecraft is getting quite close to Jupiter. Pretty soon, it's going to have to turn away from Earth and also away from the sun in order to point its engine in the correct direction. And that's actually, you know, a little bit of a hazard for a solar-powered spacecraft. We're not going to be able to communicate with it that easily, and it's not going to be power positive during this time. At the press briefing this morning, Scott Bolton made a big deal about how a lot of people will be celebrating if the burn ends properly, but he's not going to celebrate until those solar panels turn back toward the sun,

the spacecraft is power positive again, and filling those batteries, preparing for science. And as we've heard already from you and several other people on this show, no really great science again until August. That's pretty much true, because most of the best science data that Juno gets is done right around closest approach. And the next time it will approach Jupiter closely is August 27th for its Perijove 1. And that will be an opportunity when they're not doing any rocket firings. All the instruments will be on and getting their proximal Jupiter data for the first time. All the scientists are really looking forward to that.

What are you going to be doing for the next, oh, two, two and a half hours? I'm going to be twiddling my thumbs and probably playing with New Horizons data, because there's no data from Juno, and I might as well enjoy some outer solar system fun while I'm waiting. Thanks, Emily. I hope we can talk to you again after a successful orbital insertion. Me too. Fran Baganol is one of the hundreds of scientists eagerly awaiting the data that will stream back to Earth from Juno. She's a research scientist at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Fran also leads Juno's key investigation of Jupiter's massive magnetosphere, the power behind the planet's spectacular aurora.

The big day has arrived. You've been awaiting this with the rest of the team for more than five years, right? Easily. We started working on this about 2003, so, yep, over a decade. Give us the thumbnail of what you hope Juno will reveal to us about this gorgeous planet that we have not been able to learn to date. There are three main things I want to know. I want to know what it's like in the deep interior. How is the material distributed deep down inside?

Second is of the atmosphere. How much water is there? What are those? What's underneath those clouds and how is it distributed? And thirdly is what I'm really interested in, which is how does a magnetic field energize ions that then bombard the atmosphere and make the aurora? Very dramatic aurora that we see with Hubble and so on. How does that work? Do we understand why this planet has such a powerful magnetosphere? It's been described as the largest structure in the solar system.

Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field, and that's because a large volume of this giant planet is filled with conducting material, hydrogen that is electrically conducting. So we know the magnetic field is strong and extends a long way out away from the planet. But in addition to that, the strong magnetic field of Jupiter couples ions that are made from Io, that volcanic moon, sulfur and oxygen ions, that are accelerated to high energies

at processes we don't really understand. So it also blows it up like a balloon and fills it up with very hot plasma. So yes, it's a vast region, much bigger than anything else in the solar system. There's no shortage of planets like Jupiter as we look out across the galaxy, is there? There are many, many exoplanets that are Jupiter-sized, Jupiter-character. And so what we're hoping is by getting up close to Jupiter, we will learn about one planet in particular. And then maybe we can begin to generalize about how others may be variations

on a theme of that planet. You were kind enough to sit down with me here on the JPL Plaza. You were headed toward, I assume, where you're going to spend the rest of this very exciting evening. Where are you headed? We're going to have an auditorium of about 450 people filled with friends and family of the Juno team. And we're going to be talking about Juno and following along the program and hearing, you know, how things are going and getting the update from the spacecraft team. And they'll be telling us, hopefully, that all's gone well. As I talked with Fran Baganal, we were approached by her friend and colleague Jonathan Nichols of the University of Leicester. Jonathan is behind the awe-inspiring images and video of Jupiter's North Pole aurora, shot in ultraviolet over the last

month by the Hubble Space Telescope. Not a coincidence, this timing of your work. Not a coincidence at all. We proposed for exactly this time, exactly when Juno was approaching Jupiter, so we get great data of the solar wind near Jupiter and we'll be able to tell for the first time whether there is any solar wind effect on the Jovian auroras. Absolutely spectacular images. Have we seen anything like this before from Jupiter? We've seen great images of Jupiter's auroras before. What's different about these is that they seem really active.

When you look at the images, you see things popping off all over the place. It's almost like a firework party is going off on Jupiter. And we really want to find out whether there's anything in the solar wind that's causing all that activity. And in fact, we've seen some of the brightest and most powerful auroras that we've ever seen with Hubble. So it's a great set of data and I look forward to analyzing it over the coming months. Almost as if the planet was rolling out the fireworks welcome carpet to mix metaphors. Yeah, absolutely. And why not? It's a great mission. Everybody's looking forward to it.

So should Jupiter. What kinds of energies are we talking about? And how does it compare to the auroras we're so much more familiar with at our own poles? Well, Jupiter's auroras are the brightest in the solar system. They're about 100 times brighter than the Earth's. But in fact, during this campaign, we saw them peak up to about 1,000 times.

The power emitted by the auroras is about one terawatt, which is about roughly 1,000 nuclear power stations. So it's a really, really powerful system. And needless to say, the breadth of the aurora is several Earths. That's right. The size of the oval that you see in the images is about three Earths across. And, you know, that just puts it in context how awesome and powerful Jupiter's magnetic field is. Other than it leaving us in awe, what can we learn from studying the aurora?

So the auroras are very beautiful, obviously, but what the auroras tell you is they tell you what's going on in the magnetic field the magnetosphere surrounding the planet and jupiter's magnetic field jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest object in the solar system it's five times bigger than the sun it's five times further away than the sun so if you could see it in the sky it would appear as large as the sun in the sky that's how awesome it is and the auroras are a television screen that tell you about the energetic processes that's going on in the magnetic field and we're learning about different planets tells you about the space environment in in general and we as a civilization are becoming more and more

dependent on the space environment we have satellites in space we have polar communications we have long transmission lines power transmission lines that are all susceptible to so-called space weather. And so we need to find out as much as we can, and each planet gives a different story. You have delivered observations of these auroras that are, I'm sure, equal to or better than anything that can be done from Earth, yet you are still excited about what this spacecraft will tell us. How will that take place? How will it add more to our knowledge than you're able to from here? So Juno is going to get really, really close. You know, we get great images from Hubble, but we only get one set of times that we

can observe when those auroras are facing us. We can't observe when they're around the other side, and that gives us a bias. We can only observe during a set time in the Jovian day. So Juno is going to give us those information when the auroras are on the other side of the planet and they may look completely different. We've got no idea. But also Juno is going to be really close. It's going to get a view so close that we're going to see the aurora, see the thousand kilometer high auroral curtain. And not only that, we're going to be flying through the auroral region, through the auroral magnetic field lines. We're going to be measuring those electrons as they come barreling down the field line,

hit the atmosphere and make it glow. It's going to be so much fun. You are doing a good job of communicating the passion you have for the science that's coming. Where will you be as we wait to hear that Juno has gone into orbit? So I'm going to be nervously waiting with everybody else in one of the auditoriums. I'm going to be listening out for that signal that tells us that the main engines have cut off at the right time. We've got the right delta V. We've got the right change in velocity, and we're going to be in orbit. And that's when the fun begins.

Forgive me for early congratulations, Jonathan, but here's to wonderful science to come. Well, thank you very much. I headed back into the JPL Media Center and famed von Karman Auditorium. That's where I found recent guest Candy Hansen. You may remember that Candy is the Juno co-investigator in charge of JunoCam, the people's camera carried by the spacecraft. With Candy was her close colleague, Elsa Jensen, an instrument operation engineer for JunoCam at Malin Space Science Systems, builder of the unique camera. Candy, the first thing I

got to do is welcome you back. You were only on the show about three weeks ago, but this is the big night. This is the big night. This is the big night. And you have in your hands, I think, the best prop that anybody has brought tonight. Tell us about this. This is our camera. This is a working, functional, form, fit, and function model of the camera. It's quite heavy because we have all the shielding on it. You know, it's not very big. We designed it so that we would get really good pictures of the poles of Jupiter. That is new territory for the spacecraft, for us. We've never had a spacecraft go over the poles of Jupiter before. And so the nice wide-angle lens that we have on JunoCam is going to allow us to get an image from limb to limb of the polar region. So we'll be looking for a vortex,

a polar vortex, and what kinds of storms and all that kind of good stuff. Looking for hexagons, maybe. Looking for hexagons. We'll be looking for hexagons. So this camera, it's special because of the shielding, as you said, but it really has quite a heritage that comes from you amazing folks at Malin Space Systems who make all these incredible imagers that go out into space. That's right. The sensor inside the JunoCam instrument is the same sensor that we have on the Curiosity rover cameras, the Mastcam,

the MOLLE, the MARDI. So we're able to reuse the design of the sensor itself. And then as Candy said, because of the harsh radiation environment around Jupiter, we shielded it. So it grew from a few hundred grams to five pounds. It's all shielding. Just like the main electronics vault, as it's called, on the spacecraft, right? That's right. We are going into a very toxic environment, so to speak, and so everything has to be shielded. Candy, I don't know if you and I talked about this, but I think Scott Bolton mentioned that they are now hoping that the camera may last longer than was originally expected? Yes, that's right. Originally, our requirement was that it last for the first eight orbits. But because the design itself is quite robust and all the shielding around it,

we really think it'll last the whole mission. Malin is one of the unsung heroes of the exploration of the solar system. People like us who are in this, we know about you guys, but the general public probably doesn't. So the cool thing about working at Malin Space Science Systems for me is that I get to be on so many missions. I was hired for just one mission 18 years ago, the Mars Global Surveyor, and Dr. Michael Malin, who is of course my boss, said, you know, Elsa, I can only hire you for two years. And if you're lucky, it'll be two years, it could be much sooner than that. Well, 18 years later, I'm still here. And I personally worked on

six missions. But we have actually been able to contract and build cameras for even more missions. I don't have a total count, but it's on the order of 10, a few more, I think. And let me just add that I knew about the great work at Malin. So when Scott came to me and said, I'm looking for a camera, I said, I know who can build a great camera for Juno. So Candy, since you mentioned that, Scott, when he was on the show a couple of weeks after you, talked about how he had to convince you to be part of this mission. Yeah, in the beginning I actually said no because it's not really my expertise, the science

objectives that we're going for, but he needed a camera and I knew where he could get a good one. And so little by little, I kind of gave in. You told me a story that he came to you with something on a napkin and you said, no, no, no. That's yes, that's true. I said, that camera is not going to work. We have a special challenge on Juno because it's a rotating spacecraft. So you cannot use, you're fighting the rotation if you use a camera that shutters. The thing about the design of JunoCam is that it builds up the signal as the spacecraft rotates. And so instead of fighting the rotation, we use the rotation.

And I knew that that's the kind of camera that was built by Malin. And I knew that it would be a good match to our spacecraft. And that was very important. So while this camera shares heritage with other Malin cameras in space, I'm sure every project like this has its own unique challenges. I mean, you mentioned the shielding for one. Yes, but the rotation is also quite a challenge for an imaging instrument. Have you not had to deal with that kind of problem on a rotating spacecraft like this? That's correct. We've done what's called a push broom camera before for our Mars orbiters,

where you build up the picture by taking continuous coverage as the planet moves underneath you and that's how you build up the image. We've done that part before but the new part for Juno is that the spacecraft itself is rotating at two rounds per minute and so you have to sort of it's a double rotation that you have to take into account and the engineers at Miel and Space Science Systems solved that problem pretty ingeniously. Yeah, I knew they could do it. I knew they could do it. So we're able to image in the red, green, and blue filters simultaneously and build up sort of a Venetian blind, if you will.

We take all three colors in one area, then the next area, then the next area. And then in post-processing afterwards, you have to assemble the pieces, the red pieces all together for one image, the green pieces in another, and the blue in a third. And then after that, you composite them together for a true color composite. So there's a lot of both design going into it, and now there'll be a fair amount of processing going into it. And we're looking forward to actually the amateurs trying their hand at that as well. Which is something that we talked with Candy about extensively a few weeks ago.

Tell me about the relationship between the science side, Candy, which you were running as co-investigator for JunoCam, and working with the engineering folks represented over here. Being in the middle of scientists and engineers is actually my comfort zone. I really enjoy the challenges of both. And I'm always intrigued about how things work. And then I take it the next step and say, how can I use this to get the science that I'm interested in? It's something I've done my whole career. And on my side, that's actually my favorite part of my job is to work with scientists and engineers. For us on the engineering side, on the the operations side the fun part is that the scientists are out there thinking up new things they want to do sometimes we have to come up with new methods

or in this case a whole new camera but even once we get there sometimes the scientists will go well what about this can i do this and then i think the really cool part is to figure out how to do that and to continuously be really good at what we do and improve what we do so that we can continue to expand what we can allow the scientists to do. Not only will that process continue, but we will be inviting the public in to be a part of it as well. That is a new situation for all of us, that we're throwing open the doors, so to speak, of the conference

room and inviting the public to be a part of the deliberations. We have limited resources. Every time we fly from pole to pole, we have a limited amount of data volume. We have to worry about not overheating the camera. Lots of things like that that are real-life challenges. We are going to put it all out there, tell the public, okay, here's our challenges, here's our goals. What do you think? What should we take pictures of? And how many should we take? And that will be new and that will be very fun, I think. And we will find out in not much more than an hour tonight if this spacecraft is going to give you those opportunities to fly over those poles.

You had to say that. You had to remind us. Well, it's a white knuckler, as Scott Bolton told us. Where are the two of you going to be? There's a conference room where the science team and our families, science and operations and our families are going to be. And that's where I plan to be with my colleagues and, you know, all of us counting the minutes together. I'll be in the same room, and I have to say, there's a number of different places I could be, but tonight it's going to be a big experience that our team can be in the same room.

You know, Candy and I have worked together all together like 15 years, but on this project, seven years. And so being able to be with the people you have worked for so long, development, building, testing, figuring out how we're going to take the pictures and do all the science, it's a very special feeling. It's a family feeling. It's a Juno family feeling. That's right. Candy Hanson and Elsa Jensen with JunoCam. When we return, we'll relive the 35 minutes of terror as Juno screamed into Jupiter orbit. This is Planetary Radio. This is Robert Picardo. I've been a member of the Planetary Society since my Star Trek Voyager days. You may have even heard me on several episodes of Planetary Radio.

Now I'm proud to be the newest member of the Board of Directors. I'll be able to do even more to help the Society achieve its goals for space exploration across our solar system and beyond. You can join me in this exciting quest. The journey starts at planetary.org. I'll see you there. The journey starts at Planetary.org slash election2016. You know what? We could use your help. If you find anything we've missed, you can let us know. It's all at planetary.org slash election2016. Thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Go ahead, Nav. Yeah, we see the expected sharp shift upward

and the Doppler residuals indicating the main engine has started. Copy that. That's good news. We're still awaiting confirmation of that in the town. That was how we learned that Juno's main engine had started to burn exactly as planned. Controllers knew this in part because of the Doppler change in Juno's radio transmission frequency caused by the deceleration. So the engine was working, but would it burn for the full 35 minutes needed to get Juno into the right orbit? Just grabbed Emily out of the auditorium for a quick update. Where are we now?

We are about 10 minutes into the burn, and we don't know if it's actually continuing to be successful or not. We're waiting to hear news from Juno. And in the meantime, everybody's really just hanging out and we're watching TV coverage from JPL. Yeah, you know, I'm a little sad. We used to be able to get a special feed of the chatter from the mission support area at the engineering talk, and they don't provide that to us anymore.

So the media here at JPL are seeing the same thing everybody at home is. Emily Lakdawalla. Stuart Stephens of Caltech has been a key mission engineer and planner for Juno. He was also providing great commentary for NASA's webcast, including this explanation of just how close the spacecraft would come to the giant planet. And that closest approach point, closer than no other spacecraft has ever been before, is about 2,800 miles above the cloud tops, or 4,500 kilometers. And our velocity, our speed, is 58 kilometers a second. I'll translate that for you.

That's 36 miles per second, or about 130,000 miles per hour. That's the fastest we'll be going relative to Jupiter as we go right past at its closest approach point. We'll slow down a little bit as we go past that. We're continuing to slow down in general with our burn just enough at the end of that 35-minute burn to put us into orbit. Finally, finally... All stations on June accord, we have the tone for burn cutoff on Delta B. Gratitude, Moom, Jonah, Juno.

Welcome to Jupiter. Jupiter. Burn time was 2102 seconds, only differing one second off of the pre-burden predictions. A little more than an hour later, men and women in Juno polo shirts and wearing big smiles trekked across the JPL campus from the mission support area to von Karman Auditorium. Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton took the center seat on stage. Here's what he had to say when the post-orbital insertion media briefing began. You'll also hear Scott introduce JPL's Rick Neibachan, the longtime Juno project manager.

NASA did it again. That says it all to me. And I am so happy to be part of the team that did that. I mean, this team has worked so hard, and we have just such great people. And it's almost like a dream coming true right here. I had to go back and get my family and drive them in here earlier this evening. And they get in the car and they've lived this. I mean, my kids are,

you know, 12 and 13 and their whole life has been Juno basically. And I'm driving in and they say, I said, so that's it. I just want you guys to remember there's some risk here tonight. I said, by the time we're driving back to the hotel tonight either we're gonna be in orbit or we won't and we're in and now the fun begins the science so let me turn it over to Rick tell you more about what happened tonight in a minute but first we have to take care of some business. So we prepared a contingency communications procedure, and guess what?

We don't need that anymore. History. History. So tonight, through tones, Juno sang to us, and it was a song of perfection. Do you realize that after a 1.7 billion dollar journey, a billion mile, they're going to kill me. After a 1.7 billion mile journey, we hit our burn targets within one second on a target that was just tens of kilometers large. Isn't that incredible? That's how good our team is. And that's how well the Juno spacecraft performed tonight. You see a handful of people up here, but what

we represent is a team of almost 900 people that built and launched Juno, and roughly 300 people that operated it and got us all the way through into Jupiter orbit tonight. And we have a lot of team members here with us, so I'd like to shout out to our team members here in Pasadena, and we also have team members in Denver, Colorado, Lockheed Martin. So I'd like to say congratulations to the team. You are the best. You nailed it tonight. Juno Project Manager Rick Neibachan on stage with Scott Bolton, Principal Investigator for the Juno mission now orbiting Jupiter. With Rick and Scott on the stage for that media briefing was Guy Butelshees, director of interplanetary missions for Lockheed Martin,

builder of the Juno spacecraft and creator of the Denver, Colorado facility that will provide much of the day-to-day operational support for the mission. I caught Guy moments after the close of the media briefing, but far from the end of his long night. By the close of the media briefing, but far from the end of his long night. By the way, great job title, right? We've talked with people like Scott Bolton about a lot of special challenges that this spacecraft presented. Can you talk about those from the engineering side? Because you guys had to put it together. Well, certainly the first thing that comes to mind when you're going to go to Jupiter is the radiation. It's the most intense radiation in the solar system.

How are we going to keep electronics alive here in this brutal radiation environment? And so there's kind of two main things we did. One is from a mission design point of view. Instead of just doing a nice, close, circular orbit around the planet where you stay in the radiation belts, that would have killed us very quickly. So instead, we're in a very large elliptical orbit. So you can kind of think of it as we're outside the radiation for most of our two-week science orbit and then we come screaming in over the north pole into the radiation and we just spend a couple hours there taking the science data and

then we're out again. And so the majority of our orbit we're actually outside of the science data and then we're out again. And so the majority of our orbit were actually outside of the intense radiation of Jupiter. But the other thing we had to do was protect our electronics. And so what we did is we designed a titanium vault. So half-inch titanium protecting all of our avionics and put those inside so that it would be protected from the radiation. But we know the radiation is going to kill us. So the mission is designed to basically, after a year and four months of science taking, to make sure that we get all the science back because we know not too much longer after that the radiation is going to derail the electronics and the spacecraft

is going to die. So right here in this room, almost where we're standing some months ago, there was a little program and they had a prototype of a vault for the mission that is going to go to Europa. I wonder if they've been talking to you guys because you're kind of a proving ground. You're a pathfinder. Well, that's one thing that we're very excited about Juno is now that we're at Jupiter, we're going to get a tremendous amount of engineering data about how spacecraft, and especially spacecraft with state-of-the-art electronics, how it operates and survives in this kind of environment. So the last orbiter we had was Galileo around Jupiter, but that was really built with, you know, 70s and early 80s technology,

and the technology has really advanced since then in terms of performance but it's made our job harder so electronics is a lot more dense now and so how this new you know state-of-the-art electronics is going to behave out there in that radiation environment is something from an engineer point of view we really want to learn a lot because we want to do a lot more missions out to the outer planets. We got Europa but there's a lot of other missions that are in the concept phase now trying to figure out can we go to these moons where there might be oceans underneath the ice and figure out if there's life underneath

there and I think that's got a lot of people really excited. You got to mention at least one other big engineering challenge and that's the fact that this is a solar-powered spacecraft, which a lot of people thought couldn't happen that far out. Oh, that's right. So we broke the record on the furthest solar-powered mission out from the sun, past Rosetta quite a while ago. But really that's been one of the sticking points for outer planets exploration, is using nuclear power sources is just so complicated and expensive that it's really limited the number of missions that NASA

has been able to fund and send out there. Coming up with the idea and then implementing it to take solar panels and actually have them power a spacecraft out the outer planets, I believe, is really going to open up a lot of mission opportunities to not just Jupiter, but perhaps Saturn as well. So we're really excited about that. And again, one of the engineering things is how are these solar arrays going to behave out in this radiation environment? And so we're anxious to get that engineering data back. You started by talking about this partnership that Lockheed Martin has had with NASA and

has on this mission. NASA gets a lot of kudos for this. They got them tonight. But Scott Bolton and others also had some for the other contractors like you guys at Lockheed Martin. Talk about this role that you play and the partnership that you have with NASA and teams like this. We love these missions.

I mean, the interplanetary missions, that's why a lot of us got into this profession, is dreaming about going to other planets and exploring. And at Lockheed Martin, we've been fortunate since Viking to be a partner with NASA in exploring the other planets. You know, missions to Mars, we've had missions to comets, we've had sample return missions. Each one that we work with NASA is a great opportunity for us because we love to do this. But I think one of the reasons that this has been a successful partnership is because we're

not just giving them a bus. We're not just a spacecraft builder. We love the science. We love the mission. We want to work with NASA to really craft an entire mission to say, what do you want to get? What kind of science do you want to get out of this? And then come up with those kind of solutions and then not just launch it and walk away. I mean, here we are today going into orbit around Jupiter and we've got our team back in Denver with many of the same members who designed the spacecraft

still on the mission operations team. So, you know, this isn't just build a product and deliver it. This really is about, you know, joining NASA in this voyage of exploration. And you said it. You've got that other mission control center in Denver. You're going to be part of this right to the end. Oh, that's right. And so we have a multi-mission support area out in Denver that's currently operating five spacecraft. Juno, of course, tonight, you saw the team there. If you look just outside of camera range, we also have MAVEN, which is NASA's newest Mars orbiter out there.

It just finished its prime mission and is halfway through its first extended mission. We have two other Mars orbititer, MRO and Odyssey, both returning fantastic science, as well as doing relay and site survey for rovers and other landed assets there. And then of course, Spitzer, who's an infrared telescope, think of Hubble looking in the infrared, is still out there, still returning great science data,

although it's really pushing its design life and kind of coming to the end. And then, again, as we said, we're about to launch OSIRIS-REx, so we'll have another operations team joining the mix. And having everybody all in one area, having all these missions where we can cross-train people, all of our designs are very similar, and so that really makes us really efficient and affordable in terms of what we're providing to NASA. That's a pretty great record and a big success tonight.

I know you said that you've got a long night ahead still. What's ahead? Well, right now we've used tones to get information from the spacecraft because our main antenna could not be on the Earth when we did the burn because the attitudes were different. So in a sense, what we got was, you know, basically information every three seconds or so. You'd get, you know, one piece of information. So it was good enough to kind of tell us major milestones as we hit them. We made the turn. We started the burn. We completed the burn. But what we really want to do is get the high rate data down and the recorded data

so that we can go through and really dive down into the details and see exactly how the propulsion system is specially performed and how the rest of the spacecraft, what kind of state of health it's in. And so that's a lot of what we're going to be doing tonight is getting that data down, having all our subsystem engineers go through the data and make sure there aren't any hidden problems or any surprises in there because we've got a lot you know we're looking ahead 53 and a half days as the orbit we're in doesn't you know

it sounds like a long time but it's going to go by extremely quickly and we're going to be coming back around to periapsis after that 53 and a half day orbit and we're going to be taking a full set of science data all the science instruments on returning all that data and we want to make sure the spacecraft is healthy and ready to do that. I better let you get back to that data while you're still on this well-earned high. Thanks again, congratulations on a great night, and looking forward to some great, great science. Oh, my pleasure. It's really been a night, and I really want to just send a shout out to all the teams involved,

both here at JPL, the team back in Denver, and at all the science institutions, all just so excited that we're in orbit and ready to start the Juno science. And happy Fourth of July. Thank you very much. Guy Butelshees, Director of Interplanetary Missions for Lockheed Martin. A small bonus for you before we go to Bruce for this week's What's Up. Bill Nye couldn't make it back to the JPL Media Center from the VIP area where he had watched and celebrated with hundreds of other Juno fans. It was not long after orbital insertion was completed that I found this voicemail message

from Bill and Planetary Society board member Bob Picardo, who also hosts the Society's monthly Planetary Post video newsletter. Matt, Matt, Matt, Bill Nye here. Bob Picardo. Hey, man, this has worked. Engine burn complete. That's amazing. That, my friends, is rocket science.

Happy Independence Day to the United States. We are in orbit around Jupiter. Woo! Carry on, Matt. Orbiting Jupiter with telescopic eyes. Floating in the wonder of the weightless world, watching all the planets rise. Gazing through the asteroid belt, out beyond night and day. Seeing with my own eyes, the cosmic ballet. Ganymede and Io rising, talk about a haloed moon.

I am drifting wide-eyed listening, to the static in the solar tube. There's comfort in starlight, in moonlight guiding my way home. I'm falling for midnight, for your only world of ice and stone And I am alone tonight The great Cheryl Wheeler with Orbiting Jupiter. Orbiting Jupiter Time for What's Up on this special edition of Planetary Radio. We are ready to talk by Skype with Bruce Betts,

the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Radio. We are ready to talk by Skype with Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society. Bruce, we're at Jupiter. Congratulations. Great job, Matt. All I did was get to talk about it and talk to some of the people who actually made it happen, but certainly great reason to celebrate. It is indeed. So check out Jupiter. There's like an orbiter there now.

Jupiter's low in the southwest in the early evening. It's getting lower and lower. It'll get trickier to see. So embrace it now in the southwest. Brightest star-like object up there. A little brighter now that it has Juno around. In a literal sense, but not in a figurative sense uh also swing your head but don't hurt it swing your head around to the left and go to the southwestern sky and you will see mars uh fading but still looking awfully bright and reddish and

saturn looking yellowish uh hanging out over in the southwest in the early evening. We move on to this week in space history. 1965, Mariner 4 completed the first successful flyby of Mars. And exactly 50 years later, 50 years later to the day, well, depending on your time zone, New Horizons completed the first successful flyby of Pluto. Hopefully the first of many, although it'll probably be a while. Milestones in the exploration of our solar system. Random space fact. Random space fact.

Are you in the mood, Matt? I am now, yeah. I'm not sure what for, but I am. Well, Juno, as we've discussed, is solar-powered, and it receives less than 4% of the solar power at Jupiter as it did at Earth. Less than 1 25th the amount of sunlight, because Jupiter is about 5 times the Earth's sun distance,

so 1 over five squared, one twenty-fifth the amount of sunlight at Jupiter. Can I get those solar panels on my roof here in California? Yes, but I think you can find cheaper options. Maybe it'd work out because I probably only need like a square yard. Maybe it would work out because I probably only need like a square yard. Well, I'm guessing you need more than that. Yeah. You're pretty power hungry with all those radio show things you do. Indeed.

All right. We move on to the trivia question. And I asked you, what is the ratio of the equatorial surface gravity of the sun compared to the earth? surface gravity of the sun compared to the earth. So if you're on the surface or really the photosphere of the sun before you vaporize, how much more gravity would you experience than you do at the surface of the earth? How'd we do, Matt? This is just a fascinating question, I think, and we got some fascinating answers. This one was the one chosen by random.org. It came from Caleb Tilgis in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Like almost everybody else, he said the ratio of surface gravity of the sun to the surface gravity down here is about 28 to 1. Indeed, 28 times the surface gravity before you vaporize.

And after, you just won't notice it after. Well, Caleb, congratulations. It appears that you just won't notice it after. Well, Caleb, congratulations. It appears that you have won. And we're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt, a rubber Planetary Society asteroid, and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. You can do some astronomy of your own. Take a look at all that stuff that Bruce talks about in What's Up. We got some other fun stuff, as we always do. Martin Hajoski, whose name I usually mispronounce, he just said, heavy question, dudes. A whole bunch of people, including Clem Unger and Stephen

Donaldson and Jovel Clark, they all said that once that powerful gravity well reaches Earth's orbit, it's only about, this surprised me, 0.0006 G, or six ten thousandths of a G. Clem said, doesn't sound like a lot, but I guess it's enough to keep our planet in its orbit. It is indeed. Yeah, yeah, that gravity thing, it falls off just like we were discussing with sunlight. It falls off as one over r squared, so one over distance squared drops off pretty quickly. I love the inverse square law.

Joe Murray in Hoboken, New Jersey, he suspects that even Superman would find that gravity well difficult. Joe, that just shows how little you know about Superman. He's super. You must be thinking of the other guy, you know, Bruce Wayne's alter ego. Oh, I wasn't supposed to say that. Finally, Earl Green, Alma, Arkansas.

Going by that ratio, he says, I would weigh as much as an RV as I plummet through the photosphere. So I hope that's an RV with some really good sunshades. I thought you'd like that one. I did. I did very much. All right. You ready for another one? I sure am.

Keeping the Juno theme. What instrument on Juno sounds the most like it is from a Star Wars movie? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. I love it. That's intriguing. I like that one a lot. You have until the 19th, that'd be July 19th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer. Get a load of these prizes. You ready? I'm ready. A Juno Mission t-shirt. Awesome. I'm afraid we only have a large, but also

an official Juno Mission pin. A Juno Mission head? Pin head. No. Not a pin head. A Juno Mission pin. Ah, makes a lot more sense. We are done. Alright, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, think about tape measures.

Thank you, and good night. I love tape measures. They remind me of light sails sails. Slightly inside joke. Not very. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here for What's Up.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its happy members. Danielle Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed the theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan.

Clear skies.