NASA loses 214 photos of Jupiter after recurring heat problem on Juno probe

Juno has been flying around Jupiter since the summer of 2016, but the spacecraft appears to be experiencing a recurring problem. Previously there was a problem with rising temperatures and that was the case again recently, resulting in the loss of 214 photos.

NASA writes that it uses data to try to determine why the majority of photos taken with the JunoCam are unusable. The camera remains on for now and is currently performing nominally. The problem occurred on January 22, during the 48th orbit of Jupiter. The glitch lasted for a whopping 23 hours, making 214 images unusable.

As soon as the anomaly that caused the temperature increase disappeared, the camera worked properly again; the remaining planned 44 images are of good quality and simply usable. This problem also occurred before, during the 47th orbit that took place in December last year. Then the issue lasted a lot shorter: 36 minutes instead of 23 hours. As a result, of the then planned 90 photos, only the first four copies were unusable.

Originally, the camera was mainly intended for PR purposes, but now the camera with a sensor resolution of 2 megapixels also appears to be important for science. JunoCam is a color camera intended for wavelengths of the visible part of the spectrum and is used, among other things, to take images of the clouds of Jupiter, but also images of the main moons of the gas giant.

The Juno spacecraft was launched in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in 2016. The probe has been circling the planet ever since. The 49th orbit of Jupiter will take place on March 1. It’s actually quite remarkable that the camera has lasted this long, considering JunoCam was designed to last at least seven orbits around the planet. Around Jupiter there is radiation from high-energy particles because the solar wind collides with the planet’s magnetic field and it was expected that the camera would therefore not last as long.

Juno passes over Jupiter’s south pole