WEBVTT

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NASA loves acronyms,

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and so I just simply abbreviated Microwave Radiator as MWR.

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From its name, it measures the radiation in the microwave region.

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Now that sounds like a lot of highfalutin scientific terms,

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but it's really pretty simple.

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What we're actually doing is measuring the thermal radiation

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from the atmosphere of Jupiter, beneath the clouds.

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And at every wavelength

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we have six wavelengths on the instrument

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every wavelength is designed to look at a different region of the atmosphere,

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measure the thermal radiation coming up

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from some different region in the atmosphere.

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And by measuring them with the spacecraft,

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we'll be able to put that together into a picture

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you know, a three-dimensional picture of the atmospheric structure of Jupiter.

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What we've come up with

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as the most effective way to build an antenna

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is a big, flat array that's about five-feet square all the way around.

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It's as big as the side of a spacecraft,

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which is not a coincidence because

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we sort of sized the spacecraft to hold an antenna for our longest wavelength.

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Now the other wavelengths are progressively smaller by factors of two

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at every step. So it turns out

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another side of the spacecraft can hold all of the rest.

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So, we have no idea what we're going to see,

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because nobody's ever seen this region before.

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So, it's going to be a surprise to all of us

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when we get the information back,

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so we expect to discover all sorts of new things.