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NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter has left safe mode and has
successfully completed a minor burn of its thruster engines in preparation for
its next close flyby of Jupiter.
Mission
controllers commanded Juno to exit safe mode Monday, Oct. 24, with confirmation
of safe mode exit received on the ground at 10:05 a.m. PDT (1:05 p.m. EDT). The
spacecraft entered safe mode on Oct. 18 when a software performance monitor
induced a reboot of the spacecraft's onboard computer. The team is still
investigating the cause of the reboot and assessing two main engine check
valves.
"Juno exited safe mode as
expected, is healthy and is responding to all our commands,” said Rick
Nybakken, Juno project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California. "We anticipate we will be turning on the instruments
in early November to get ready for our December flyby."
In preparation for that close
flyby of Jupiter, Juno executed an orbital trim maneuver Tuesday at 11:51 a.m.
PDT (2:51 p.m. EDT) using its smaller thrusters. The burn, which lasted just
over 31 minutes, changed Juno’s orbital velocity by about 5.8 mph (2.6 meters
per second) and consumed about 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) of propellant. Juno
will perform its next science flyby of Jupiter on Dec. 11, with time of closest
approach to the gas giant occurring at 9:03 a.m. PDT (12:03 p.m. EDT). The
complete suite of Juno’s science instruments, as well as the JunoCam imager,
will be collecting data during the upcoming flyby.
“We
are all excited and eagerly anticipating this next pass close to Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the
Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The science collected so far has
been truly amazing."
The Juno spacecraft launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from
Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over
the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers).
During these flybys, Juno probes beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter
and studies its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure,
atmosphere and magnetosphere.