Live coverage: Juno spacecraft hours away from arriving at Jupiter

SpaceFlightNow.com ^ | 4JUL2016 | Stephen Clark

[Jack Hydrazine]

18:19
Juno should now be starting a slow maneuver from its power-generating sun-pointing attitude toward the orientation required for tonight's Jupiter Orbit Insertion burn. This slow precession maneuver should take about 21 minutes, then Juno will hold its position before starting a faster precession to the burn attitude.

17:56 Last pre-JOI image from JunoCam




Here is the official caption from NASA:

"This is the final view taken by the JunoCam instrument on NASA's Juno spacecraft before Juno's instruments were powered down in preparation for orbit insertion. Juno obtained this color view on June 29, 2016, at a distance of 3.3 million miles (5.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter.

The spacecraft is approaching over Jupiter's north pole, providing an unprecedented perspective on the Jupiter system, including its four large moons."

JunoCam and Juno's other science instruments have been turned off for today's arrival maneuver.

Live video coverage of the event begins at 7:30pm PDT/10:30pm EDT which can be viewed at the link above or the links below. Orbital insertion burn begins at 8:18pm PDT/11:18pm EDT.

NASA JUNO: Mission To Jupiter Real Time Simulation and live coverage via YouTube.

Second link to live coverage via LiveStream.

[TexasRepublic]

As Western science reaches out to the stars, it is sobering to contemplate that elsewhere men are brutally killing each other because they have not learned much in 5,000 years!

[Larry Lucido]

Make sure your tray tables are in an upright position.

[Larry Lucido]

Io, Io, so it’s off to work I go!

[Talisker]

When did the Bureau of Motor Vehicles open a branch office on Jupiter?

Don't joke - they're probably planning one as we speak.

[Flick Lives]

Neat animation of the Juno spacecraft trajectory. It did a giant slingshot maneuver in the inner solar system before heading out toward Jupiter.

https://youtu.be/sYp5p2oL51g

[Larry Lucido]

Cool!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Another 40 days or so and the sun would be between the earth and Jupiter, presumably stopping the communications for a while. How long is Juno supposed to stick around Jupiter, is it just going to be left there forever or will it go out further or come back to earth bringing samples or what?

[bigbob]

Can you imagine how bad you’d have to pee?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Or, they learned but then forgot it again.

[WENDLE]

I will predict Jupiter is a lifeless rock not worth the spending.

[dragnet2]

The solar system is a really big place. But it’s just a pinpoint compared to our our galaxy. And from just 2 million light years away, our entire galaxy appears so small it’s all but invisible to the unaided eye. The distances never cease to amaze me.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Whatever these gas giants are, they are not “rocks.”

[advertising guy]

When you first found out an egg was not round, did that too queer your day ?

[HiTech RedNeck]

God thought big, and our modern science’s attempt to shrink it is ludicrously failing.

[WENDLE]

Just wait. Gas??? are you kidding? How will that damned thing land? We are $20 trillion in debt. We don’t have any money for this, IMO.

[WENDLE]

Boy, now that is a non sequitur

[Larry Lucido]

Samples?

Drops of Jupiter?

[Larry Lucido]

Didn’t Juno that?

[Jack Hydrazine]

Juno will be around Jupiter for 37 orbits or about 20 months. After that it will be deorbited and crash into the planet in February of 2018.

More here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)

[Larry Lucido]

That’s why there’s so much ammonia in the Jupiter atmosphere.