Nasa launches Jupiter probe Juno


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A $1.1bn (?0.7bn) unmanned Nasa space mission has launched from Florida on a journey to the planet Jupiter.

The Juno spacecraft will cruise beyond Mars to put itself in orbit around the gas giant in 2016.

It is the first solar-powered mission to venture this far from the Sun.

The mission launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday at 12:25 local time (16:25 GMT; 17:25 BST), after a brief delay caused by a helium leak.

There were concerns with the helium charging system on the rocket's Centaur upper stage, but a small leak on the "ground side" of the rocket was found to be the culprit.

"Today, with the launch of the Juno spacecraft, Nasa began a journey to yet another new frontier," said the agency's administrator Charles Bolden.

Juno's mission is to probe the secrets of the Solar System by explaining the origin and evolution of its biggest planet.

The spacecraft's remote sensing instruments will look down into the giant through the many layers and measure their composition, temperature, motion and other properties.

This should yield some remarkable new insights into the coloured bands that wrap around the planet, and a new perspective on the famous Great Red Spot - the colossal storm that has raged on Jupiter for hundreds of years.

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kinda epic that they used an old ICBM rather than building something from scratch for the mission.

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It's not an "old ICBM."

The Convair SM-65 "Atlas" first flew in 1957, went out of ICBM service in 1981, and the SM-65F variant launched its last weather satellite in 1995.

The Lockheed-Martin Atlas V is an entirely different bird - an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) that flew for the first time in August 2002. EELV is a program to give the USAF its own launchers after it decided, correctly as it turns out, that the Shuttle and other NASA launchers were too expensive and flawed for military and reconnaissance satellite launches.

Other EELV's are the Boeing Delta family and the retired Martin Titan family. Soon to be added to the list will be the Orbital Sciences Taurus II, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

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There are 3 passengers. The spacecraft engineers snuck them on board before launch -

http://technologydailynews.com/2011/08/lego-minifigs-to-accompany-juno-space-probe-mission/

lego-minifigs-to-accompany-juno-space-probe-mission.jpg

Launching this Friday will be NASA?s Atlas V rocket containing not only its most important piece of equipment, the Juno space probe, but three little Lego minifigs as well. Included in this mission will be Lego likenesses of Italian astronomer Galileo, Roman god Jupiter, and Jupiter?s sister Juno, these toys soon to be the furthest flung toys in history. The rocket will be heading to Jupiter on a five-year trip that will be a joint mission between NASA and Lego, each of the special minifigs affixed to the spacecraft for a (hopefully) safe journey all the way.

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  • 2 weeks later...

yeah those figurines are pretty funny! thanks for this thread Hum, i really wanted to convey my thanks and wishes to the Juno team, this is a major mission and i can't wait for the science to start coming in. Too bad it'll take five years to get to Jupiter, they should have put an actual engine on this ship!

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