The north polar region of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io was captured by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno during the spacecraft’s 57th close pass of the gas giant on Dec. 30, 2023. (photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Gerald Eichstädt)
NASA unveiled their efforts to save the camera known as JunoCam on the Juno space probe orbiting Jupiter. During the presentation on July 16, they revealed the operations done in December of 2023 to keep the camera alive, despite damage done by radiation.
Juno is a NASA-owned space probe sent to orbit Jupiter to discover the planet’s origin and evolution. It has measured many of Jupiter’s elements, including its composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Notable achievements of the Juno probe include the detection of the most intense volcanic eruption on Jupiter’s moon Io, capturing an image of a lightning strike near Jupiter’s pole, and taking the first close-up picture of the moon Europa in over 20 years.
Radiation Damage
The probe’s camera, JunoCam, despite being created to sustain only eight orbits, is still operational mid orbit 76. The machine, however, hasn’t made it out unscathed. At least three times the camera has shown signs of significant radiation damage, but the Juno team managed to fix the issue each time, despite being upwards of 615 million kilometers away.
In space, radiation takes the form of high-energy particles that move at speeds near the speed of light. These particles can come from the sun or cosmic rays from outside our solar system, and they can get trapped within strong magnetic fields. Large swathes exist in dangerous radiation belts around Jupiter due to the planet's strong magnetic field. This puts the Juno probe directly in the path of this radiation, which can cause damage to electronics and corrupt any data it holds.
Juno was created with a special vault lined with titanium to protect hardware inside from radiation. This was made to hold critical components for the mission, such as sensitive science equipment and the spacecraft’s systems. JunoCam, which was later repurposed for research purposes, was initially intended solely for public outreach of the mission, and it therefore was not placed within the radiation vault. This means it has been continuously exposed to all of the radiation within the radiation belts around Jupiter.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as captured by the JunoCam. (credit: NASA)
The camera survived its primary mission, the first 34 orbits, without any signs of damage. Image corruption due to radiation, however, became noticeable around orbit 47. The team knew that the corruption was likely due to radiation, but how it was damaged specifically could only be speculated.
There weren’t many options and the team had to think quickly.
Solving the Problem
“We commanded JunoCam’s one heater to raise the camera’s temperature to 77 degrees Fahrenheit — much warmer than typical for JunoCam,” said Jacob Schaffner, JunoCam imaging engineer. They attempted a process called annealing, where for an amount of time a material is heated before cooled slowly. The goal is to have the heating potentially remove defects, and for the orbits following the annealing process of JunoCam, it began producing images lacking the radiation corruption. The Juno spacecraft continued to fly through the radiation belts and by orbits 55 and 56 the corruption was back- and worse.
“We commanded JunoCam’s one heater to raise the camera’s temperature to 77 degrees Fahrenheit — much warmer than typical for JunoCam,” said Jacob Schaffner, JunoCam imaging engineer. They attempted a process called annealing, where for an amount of time a material is heated before cooled slowly. The goal is to have the heating potentially remove defects, and for the orbits following the annealing process of JunoCam, it began producing images lacking the radiation corruption. The Juno spacecraft continued to fly through the radiation belts and by orbits 55 and 56 the corruption was back- and worse.
To make matters worse, by orbit 57 the probe was going to do a flyby of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. The team wanted JunoCam operating by then to take photos during the pass. After exhausting all other options, the team turned once again to the annealing process, raising the temperature to a more extreme degree than before.
The first week, test images showed no improvement despite the annealing. Finally, cutting it close to the Io flyby, the images began to clear of corruption.
Impact
Now, the Juno team has further used the annealing process on the Juno spacecraft, annealing JunoCam and other instruments. They successfully pulled off a fix of the JunoCam millions of kilometers away from the issue. Jupiter and Earth were near their closest all year, but it still took over half an hour for a signal to go from Earth to the probe or vice-versa.Juno has continued to orbit Jupiter and is currently on its 76th and final orbit of the planet. JunoCam is still operating because of the Juno team’s quick thinking and problem solving skills. The Juno team’s success was not just a success for their mission and for the exploration of Jupiter. They made a great step forward for the technology of radiation protection and repair that come with space travel. The JunoCam captures snapshots of both Jupiter and the future of space travel.
NASA Repairs JunoCam: How Engineers Fixed a Camera 600 Million Kilometers from Earth
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