Juno probe approaches Jupiter The Juno probe is set to pass close to Jupiter early in July, some five years after it was launched from Cape Canaveral. The NASA robotic explorer has travelled 1.4 billion miles since its launch, and is now set to come closer to Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, than any previous spacecraft The probe will gather data related to Jupiter’s composition, and its gravitational and magnetic field. Juno will come to within 2,900 miles of the planet in this mission, exposing it to extremely harsh environments, and specifically a radiation storm generated by Jupiter’s extremely powerful magnetic field.
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Close to the surface
It is necessary for the probe to get this close to the planet in order to gather the relevant data. “We are not looking for trouble, we are looking for data. Problem is, at Jupiter, looking for the data Juno is looking for, you have to go in the kind of neighbourhoods where find trouble pretty quick,” says Dr Scott Bolton, Juno’s Principal Investigator. The spacecraft is designed to cope with these harsh environments and gather data. Juno’s flight computer is housed in a titanium armoured vault, while the spacecraft also carries several sophisticated instruments, including magnetometers, a microwave
radiometer and a spectrograph, designed to investigate Jupiter’s atmosphere, environment and overall composition. The probe is due to spend a year orbitting Jupiter, gathering data on its water content, its magnetic fields, and also looking to find evidence of a solid core. While Jupiter is known to be comprised primarily of hydrogen, less is known about the core of the planet, which could hold some heavier elements.
A thundering storm on HAT-P-11b The next time you find yourself caught in a thunderstorm, be thankful that you’re not on HAT-P-11b, an exo-planet around 122 light years from earth. Researchers from the University of St Andrews have found that the planet experiences violent lightning storms, millions of times more powerful than we experience on earth.
Unexplained signals
This work has its roots in the findings of French researchers from 2009, who observed unexplained radio signals from the planet, which is located in the Cygnus constellation and orbits the star HAT-P-11. The researchers then looked to investigate the origin of the signal, using sophisticated techniques to observe the atmosphere on the exo-planet. “We assumed that this signal was real and was coming from the planet. Then we asked the question: could such a signal be produced by lightning in the planet’s atmosphere? And if yes, how many lightning flashes would be needed for it?” explains Gabriella Hodosan, a PhD student participating in the study. The researchers found that 53 lightning flashes over a square kilometre would explain the radio signal that the French team observed, lightning on a scale that is difficult to picture. “Imagine the biggest lightning storm you’ve ever been caught in. Now imagine that this storm is happening everywhere over the surface of the planet. A storm like that would produce a radio signal approaching 1 percent of the strength of the signal that was observed in 2009 on exoplanet HAT-P-11b,” says Dr Paul Rimmer, a co-author of the paper.
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