Armed with giant solar panels, the probe “Juno” set a record, becoming the most distant cosmic Explorer, powered by energy from the Sun. A few days ago, a four-tonne machine reached 793 million kilometers, surpassing the previous record set by “Rosetta”, more than a million kilometers.
“Juno” has a 10-meter solar panels, which are 18 698 solar cells — this allows the machine to obtain the necessary energy even there, where almost no light comes from the Sun.
“Jupiter is five times farther from the Sun than Earth, and it comes up 25 times less sunlight,” said the project Manager “Juno” RIC Nybakken.
A total of eight spacecraft in the history overcame more than 800 million kilometers to Jupiter and beyond, and they are all powered by a nuclear power plant. New record is good, but running in 2011, “Juno” is still a lot of work. The probe should arrive at the scene on July 4 of this year, after which he will make 33 orbits around the giant planet, approaching the surface at a distance of 5 thousand kilometers. NASA says that the mission is the study of the dense cloud cover and powerful storms, in order “to learn more about the origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere of the planet”.
According to the materials of Engadget