Juno mission to Jupiter may get more science assignments (with mission video)

Lee Roop | By Lee Roop | The Huntsville Times
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on June 24, 2012 at 6:47 AM, updated June 24, 2012 at 7:13 AM
Jupiter (planet)View full sizeA Hubble image of the planet Jupiter (NASA)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- When you've built and launched a $1 billion planetary probe on time and on budget, you're a star in NASA's galaxy and the agency listens when you talk. That's why scientists from the Juno mission to Jupiter, led by principal investigator Dr. Scott Bolton, got a warm welcome last week at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Juno, a probe whose size Bolton described as "rim to rim on a high school basketball court," is due to arrive at Jupiter in 2016. It launched in 2011 on an Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance in Decatur.

Juno's elliptical path calls for it to loop back around Earth next year to pick up a gravitational slingshot boost toward Jupiter.

The meetings at Marshall, which manages the NASA program that includes Juno, were to review the plan in terms of cost, staffing and schedule, NASA said. They were to make sure NASA and the Juno team were on the same page even though Juno is still a long way from Jupiter.

Bolton, who is director of the Space Sciences Department at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, took a break Thursday night to talk about Jupiter and Juno to more than 100 space enthusiasts at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

"In the beginning," he said, "there was a cloud in our galaxy."

Scott Bolton (scientist)Juno probe lead scientist Scott Bolton (NASA)

The Hubble Space Telescope has shown us many clouds like it, Bolton said. Giant, billowing pillows of helium, hydrogen and other elements, they have been called "pillars of creation" for their role in birthing distant stars.

"Somehow, this cloud collapsed on itself and the sun was born," Bolton said. And there was "a tiny bit of leftovers."

"Most of the tiny bit of leftovers became Jupiter -- more than half," he said. "And the leftovers of the leftovers became the rest of the planets and us."

Jupiter was probably our solar system's first planet, Bolton said, and it dwarfs the others. One thousand Earths would fit inside Jupiter, Bolton said, but 1,000 Jupiters would fit inside the sun.

Jupiter, the first leftover, was shown by America's 1989 Galileo probe to have a tiny bit more of the relatively rare elements, including carbon and nitrogen, than the sun. "And we don't know why that is," he said, since both came from the same cloud.

"It turns out," Bolton said, "the stuff Jupiter has a little more of is what we're made out of. So, when we try to understand what's going on with Jupiter, what we're really doing is looking at the history of the elements and the volatiles that eventually made us, the Earth and life itself."

Bolton said scientists believe each of the planets took turns collapsing the cloud to form themselves, "but the process must not have been exactly the same with Jupiter as it was the sun, or Jupiter would be the same composition as the sun.

"Something happened in between the two," he said, "and that something enabled us to be born, the Earth itself." It's important to understand, Bolton said, so we understand the likelihood there are other Earth-like planets around other suns.

Juno will drop far deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere than Galileo and carry more probes. "Those two things equal money, lots of money," Bolton said. Scientists had resolved to wait until money was available, but they devised a plan to learn more with less. That plan became the Juno satellite, which will make 30 polar orbits of Jupiter seeking clues to its origin, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

In the question session afterward, Bolton was asked how his team was able to avoid budget creep and launch Juno on time and on budget. Talk with your teammates constantly, Bolton said, and don't spend money developing new technology when existing technology will work. Then, he said, talk with your teammates some more.