Juno brought a lot of panic to NASA controllers during the recent Jupiter Flyby
For nearly a decade, a large survey has been brave enough to bring us to the fascinating close-up views of Jupiter and its moons. But sometimes, gasoline giants get the best. The Juno mission recently entered unexpected safety mode in Jupiter's scheduled flight, temporarily reducing its scientific tools.
NASA recently revealed that Juno was taking the 71st approach when he entered the precautionary measures twice on April 4. It is not clear what could have caused Juno to enter safe mode, but the Space Administration believes that this may have happened as the spacecraft flew over Jupiter's radiation belt.
Mission operations reestablished the data transmission through Juno, which shows that the spacecraft first entered safe mode at 5:17 a.m. ET, an hour ahead of its scheduled Flyby. Juno's tight approach in Perijove or Jupiter is once again in safe mode. In safe mode, non-essential functions on the spacecraft are suspended. Juno powers its scientific tools while maintaining its communication and power management systems. The spacecraft restarted the computer and pointed its antenna to the Earth for communication.
Safe mode is activated when the spacecraft detects an abnormality. While the team is still waiting to analyze the data to figure out exactly what’s going on, early signs indicate that Juneau is flying by in Jupiter’s radiation belt when it activates its safe mode.
Jupiter has a magnetic field of 20,000 times stronger than Earth and is the strongest of all planets in the solar system. According to the European Space Agency, Earth's magnetosphere captures charged particles and then accelerates them like particle accelerators. The highest flux of energy particles is found in the dessert-shaped band around the radiation band around Jupiter's equator.
Juno has a titanium radiation library to prevent high-energy particles from affecting the spacecraft, but that is sometimes not enough. Since arriving at Jupiter in 2016, the spacecraft has entered safety mode four times.
According to NASA, after re-establishing communications with Juno, the team is working to transmit data before and after entering safe mode, as the spacecraft performs flight software diagnosis.
Juno plans to fly over Jupiter on May 7, during which it will make a close proximity to Jovian Moon IO at about 55,300 miles (89,000 kilometers). Hopefully this time the spacecraft can keep its scientific tools open.
