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

Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since the summer of 2016, but the spacecraft seems to be dealing with recurring problems. Earlier there was already a problem with rising temperatures and that was the case again recently, resulting in the loss of 214 photos.

NASA writes that it is trying to find out on the basis of data why the majority of the 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 Jupiter’s 48th orbit. The glitch lasted for no less than 23 hours, leaving 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 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 the camera with a sensor resolution of 2 megapixels has now turned out to be important for science as well. 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 Jupiter’s clouds, but also images of the gas giant’s main moons.

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

Juno skims over Jupiter’s south pole