Nasa’s Juno space probe orbiting Jupiter went into “safe mode” with cameras and instruments offline just as it prepared to pass over the immense planet’s dense cloud tops, the space agency said.

Juno had rebooted its onboard computer and could communicate with Earth but its activities were limited until engineers diagnosed what went wrong, Nasa said.



“It’s too early to take a guess” but the issue with Juno was not caused by the intense radiation belts surrounding Jupiter because the spacecraft was far away when it entered safe mode, said mission chief scientist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

On Mars, scientists with the European Space Agency lost contact with the Schiaparelli experimental lander that was supposed to touch down. The mother ship successfully slipped into orbit around Mars but the fate of the lander was unknown.

For Juno it is the second setback in less than a week. The solar-powered craft has been orbiting Jupiter since July on a $1.1bn mission to explore its poles, atmosphere and interior.

Last week mission managers decided to postpone an engine firing planned for Wednesday after a pair of valves in the spacecraft’s propulsion system did not work as expected.

Nasa said the two problems were not related.

The delay means Juno will not swing close again to Jupiter until December. The spacecraft made its first close pass in August, beaming back pictures of Jupiter’s stormy north pole, which appeared bluer than the rest of the planet.

Scientists continued to pore over close-up images from the first flyby, determining that Jupiter’s magnetic fields and northern and southern auroras were more powerful than expected.

The Juno mission was designed to fly closer to Jupiter than previous spacecraft, coming within 2,500 miles of the surface. Some three dozen close passes are planned during the 20-month mission.

With the Associated Press </s> Nasa announces Juno craft circling gas giant had to shut down camera and instruments, while ESA says Schiaparelli lander may have crashed on red planet

Bad day for space probes: one lost on Mars, another in 'safe mode' at Jupiter

Nasa’s Juno space probe orbiting Jupiter went into “safe mode” with cameras and instruments offline just as it prepared to pass over the immense planet’s dense cloud tops, the space agency said.

Juno had rebooted its onboard computer and could communicate with Earth but its activities were limited until engineers diagnosed what went wrong, Nasa said.



“The spacecraft is healthy and we are working our standard recovery procedure,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“It’s too early to take a guess” but the issue with Juno was not caused by the intense radiation belts surrounding Jupiter because the spacecraft was far away when it entered safe mode, said mission chief scientist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.



On Mars, scientists with the European Space Agency lost contact with the Schiaparelli experimental lander that was supposed to touch down. The mother ship successfully slipped into orbit around Mars but the fate of the lander was unknown.



Schiaparelli lander's planned descent to Mars Schiaparelli lander’s planned descent to Mars

For Juno it is the second setback in less than a week. The solar-powered craft has been orbiting Jupiter since July on a $1.1bn mission to explore its poles, atmosphere and interior.

Last week mission managers decided to postpone an engine firing planned for Wednesday after a pair of valves in the spacecraft’s propulsion system did not work as expected. Nasa said this and the latest problem were not related.

The delay means Juno will not swing close again to Jupiter until December. The spacecraft made its first close pass in August, beaming back pictures of Jupiter’s stormy north pole, which appeared bluer than the rest of the planet.



Scientists continued to pore over close-up images from the first flyby, determining that Jupiter’s magnetic fields and northern and southern auroras were more powerful than expected.

The Juno mission was designed to fly closer to Jupiter than previous spacecraft, coming within 2,500 miles of the surface. Some three dozen close passes are planned during the 20-month mission.

With the Associated Press </s> Wednesday was meant to be a momentous day for NASA's Juno spacecraft. The robot, which entered orbit around Jupiter in July, was set to fire its main engine for the first time. That would have maneuvered Juno into a new trajectory where it could pass close to Jupiter's surface more often.

But last week, some of Juno's pieces weren't working quite as they should. A set of valves in the fuel pressurization system -- components that help facilitate the firing of the main engine -- were a bit sluggish when scientists executed a command sequence. The mission team decided to hold off on the scheduled burn, which meant keeping the craft's current orbit until December. Yet they hoped to have all of the spacecraft's instruments turned on for the planetary pass it would make Wednesday, making the most of a close encounter with Jupiter as consolation for the passes they'd miss.

Instead, NASA reports, Juno went into safe mode several hours before that flyby. This happened automatically -- it seems a software performance monitor prompted Juno to reboot its main computer -- and isn't necessarily a horrible sign. Safe mode is what's supposed to happen when the spacecraft senses something unexpected. It battens down the hatches: The spacecraft ensures that it's facing the sun to receive solar power, then turns off its scientific instruments and any nonessential components to protect them for several hours or days.

Juno was still about 13 hours away from its planned close encounter when it entered safe mode, so scientists think it unlikely that the spacecraft encountered any truly troublesome radiation that would cause permanent damage.

"We were still quite a ways from the planet's more intense radiation belts and magnetic fields," Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "The spacecraft is healthy, and we are working our standard recovery procedure."

Unfortunately, the safe-mode procedure kept Juno from collecting any scientific data during Wednesday's flyby. The next chance for close-range data collection will come Dec. 11. At that time, depending on Juno's condition, NASA may again try to slip it into the new orbit. If the transition is successful, the orbiter will make close passes of Jupiter every two weeks instead of every two months.

The team is analyzing data from Juno's initial flyby in late August, which gave scientists their first tantalizing glimpse below Jupiter's roiling clouds.

NASA is optimistic that Juno will behave normally for the next flyby. But it's been a rough week for space robots across the solar system: On Wednesday, the European and Russian space agencies were able to insert a satellite into orbit around Mars as part of the ExoMars mission. But the mission's second goal -- touchdown of the Schiaparelli lander on the Red Planet's surface -- seems to have failed. </s> The space agency said Wednesday that Juno detected a problem, went into safe mode and shut off its cameras and instruments hours before it was supposed to pass over Jupiter’s dense cloud tops.

Juno rebooted its onboard computer and can communicate with Earth, but its activities are limited until engineers diagnose what went wrong.

“It’s too early to take a guess,” but the issue isn’t caused by the intense radiation belts surrounding Jupiter because the spacecraft was far away when it entered safe mode, said mission chief scientist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

It’s the second setback in less than a week for the solar-powered Juno, which has been orbiting the giant planet since July on a $1.1 billion mission to explore its poles, atmosphere and interior.

Last week, mission managers decided to postpone an engine firing planned for Wednesday after a pair of valves in the spacecraft’s propulsion system didn’t work as expected.

NASA said the two problems weren’t related.

The delay means Juno won’t swing close again to Jupiter until December. The spacecraft made its first close pass in August, beaming back pictures of Jupiter’s stormy north pole, which appeared bluer than the rest of the planet.

Scientists continued to pore over close-up images from the first flyby, determining that Jupiter’s magnetic fields and northern and southern lights were more powerful than expected.

The Juno mission was designed to fly closer to Jupiter than previous spacecraft, coming within 2,500 miles of the surface. Some three dozen close passes are planned during the 20-month mission.

Over at Mars, an experimental lander that was supposed to touch down on the red planet Wednesday lost contact with ground controllers at the European Space Agency. The mother ship successfully slipped into orbit around Mars and will study the atmosphere, but the fate of the lander was still unknown. </s> NASA's Juno probe reached Jupiter in July 2016, and scientists' view of the solar system has not been the same since.

The $1 billion mission has taken stunning images of the gas giant several hundred million miles from Earth.

More importantly, though, the tennis-court-size spacecraft has probed some of the planet's deepest, darkest secrets with a suite of high-tech instruments.

Here are some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries made by Juno at Jupiter — and a taste of what's possibly to come, since the probe has several years of exploration left before NASA crashes it into the planet.

Juno flies in an elliptical orbit around Jupiter, getting close to the planet once every 53.5 days.

Juno's closest flyby of Jupiter lasts several hours and is called a perijove. During that time, the probe flies over Jupiter's north pole and exits with views of the south pole.

Juno passes within thousands of miles of the planet's surface during a perijove, enabling the probe to make detailed and unprecedented measurements of gravity, magnetism, and plasma fields using a suite of high-tech instruments. It also beams back stunning images.

Until Juno's arrival at Jupiter in July 2016, no top-down or bottom-up images had ever been taken of Jupiter's poles.

The probe flew over Jupiter's poles for the first time and sent back data that blew scientists away.

Observatories like NASA's Hubble Space Telescope had recorded auroras at Jupiter's poles, but nobody had ever seen the enigmatic regions in the detail Juno revealed.

"[I]t looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before," Scott Bolton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and the Juno mission's leader, said in a NASA press release in September 2016.

"It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms," he added. "There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to — this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter."

The planet's weather goes much deeper than anyone thought.

Juno's first ultra-close pass helped researchers peel back Jupiter's atmospheric layers like an onion and see hundreds of miles deep into the planet's hydrogen, helium, and other gases.

"The structure of the zones and belts still exists deep down," Bolton said during a news conference in 2016. "So whatever's making those colors, whatever's making those stripes, is still existing pretty far down into Jupiter. That came as a surprise to many of the scientists."

Later studies revealed that the appearance of belts, bands, and storms may originate more than 1,900 miles below the planet's gassy surface.

In April, NASA released eye-catching images of symmetric clusters of storms.

The images were created from multiple photos taken in infrared light (a wavelength that's normally invisible to us). Next, scientists merged the pictures together made them 3D to emphasize brightness and temperature.

Scientists are still trying to understand what, exactly, creates these stormy super-cells that stretch thousands of miles wide.

Most lightning is concentrated at Jupiter's north pole.

During Juno's first eight perijoves, or flybys, the spacecraft detected 377 lightning discharges via their crackle of radio emissions. When researchers mapped the locations of the lightning, they found it concentrated at the planet's poles, not its equator.

Researchers think this happens because when the sun warms Jupiter's atmosphere, the heat stabilizes the planet's mid-areas against upwelling storms. But at the poles, where it's much cooler, big cells of warm inner gases can punch to the surface and create lightning.

Weirdly, most of the lightning was recorded at Jupiter's north pole — something researchers have yet to explain.

The planet's gravity is kind of lopsided.

Juno has a special instrument that allows it to precisely map Jupiter's gravitational field. The first major results from that data show that field is slightly lopsided, with a bit more "pull" from its northern hemisphere.

Researchers think this is tied to Jupiter's deep-running weather systems, which can push huge masses of its atmospheric gases to certain parts of the planet.

Its magnetic field is also lopsided — and stronger than scientists thought.

Jupiter's magnetic field is the strongest in the solar system and drives all sorts of important behaviors, including polar auroras, plasma fields around the planet, and radiation that can threaten space missions. So it's important to understand in detail. Luckily, magnetic instruments on Juno can continuously map the planet's magnetic field.

Those readings have surprised researchers in multiple ways. They showed Jupiter's magnetic field strength is about two times more powerful than researchers previously thought.

The data also revealed that the entire magnetic field, like the planet's gravity field, is slightly lopsided. The reasons for that that have yet to be explained.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot suggests the planet is rich with water.

Many moons around Jupiter hold water and may even harbor vast oceans that are habitable to aliens. But Jupiter looks pretty dry on the surface, and shoring up evidence for water molecules inside the planet itself has proven difficult.

Juno is confronting this problem with its suite of sensitive instruments and ultra-close flybys. Researchers combined Juno's data with telescope data gathered about the Great Red Spot, which affords a deeper view of Jupiter's atmosphere. They discovered that the world may have two to nine times more oxygen than the sun — and oxygen is a key component of water.

The planet may have a "fuzzy" core.

"There seems to be a fuzzy core, and it may be much larger than anybody had anticipated," Bolton said during a NASA press conference in May 2017.

Hydrogen in the depths of Jupiter exists in a semi-gaseous, semi-dissolved — hence, "fuzzy" —state. Earth, by comparison, has outer liquid that moves around a solid core.

Jupiter's fuzzy core may be what drives its powerful dynamo and magnetic fields, sort of like the metallic dynamo at Earth's core. The previous thinking was that hydrogen — normally a gas as we know it — compressed into a liquid-metal state was the culprit for Jupiter's magnetic fields.

Auroras start with a planet's magnetic field. That field grabs charged solar particles blown into space, then races them toward the planet's poles. When the particles slam into atoms of gas in the atmosphere, they create a light show.

But Juno researchers have discovered that Jupiter's polar auroras have 10-30 times more energy than expected, and they give off that energy mostly in ultraviolet light, which is invisible to human eyes. What's more, the auroras dim when the planet rotates into darkness.

Researchers have yet to figure out how auroras work at Jupiter, though they suspect it has something to do with an energetic field of plasma around the planet, according to Space.com.

Juno found a possible new volcano on Jupiter's moon Io.

Juno was designed to study Jupiter in detail, but the planet's dozens of moons make for interesting targets, too.

The planet's moon Io — a hellish, sulfur-choked moon that's about as wide as North America and littered with volcanoes — is one example. Scientists got just a few glances at the moon decades ago, using spacecraft like Galileo and Voyager.

But in December 2017, Juno's infrared-seeing camera found what looks like a previously undetected volcano on the moon. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the world has 150 active volcanoes — yet 250 more await discovery, based on how much material is spewing off the planet's surface and into space. </s> The U.S. space agency said the glitch followed an unrelated problem last week that prompted it to skip firing Juno’s braking engine, to steer the probe into a tighter regular orbit around Jupiter.

Juno's computer restarted after Wednesday's shutdown and the spacecraft was "healthy," NASA said in a statement.

Juno reached Jupiter in July for a 20-month study to learn how and where the giant, gas planet formed, setting the stage for the evolution and development of Earth and the rest of the planets in the solar system.

During Wednesday's flyby, scientists had planned to begin using Juno's instruments to peer beneath Jupiter’s thick clouds and map its gargantuan magnetic fields. But the loss of the ship's main computer, 13 hours before the close encounter, put the observation plans on hold until at least Dec. 11, when the spacecraft makes its next close pass by Jupiter, NASA said.

The cause of the computer outage is under investigation. NASA also is analyzing the unrelated propulsion system issue.

NASA had hoped to shift Juno into a tighter orbit around Jupiter so it could fly close more often. Those plans are now on hold.

Lead scientist Scott Bolton, with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said the mission goals are not impacted by Juno's orbit, since critical measurements are taken whenever the spacecraft flies close to Jupiter.

"The worst-case scenario is I have to be patient and get the science slowly,” he told reporters during a webcast news conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California. </s> Data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft using its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument point to a new heat source close to the south pole of Io that could indicate a previously undiscovered volcano on the small moon of Jupiter. The infrared data were collected on Dec. 16, 2017, when Juno was about 290,000 miles (470,000 kilometers) away from the moon.

“The new Io hotspot JIRAM picked up is about 200 miles (300 kilometers) from the nearest previously mapped hotspot,” said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. “We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously discovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature.”

The Juno team will continue to evaluate data collected on the Dec. 16 flyby, as well as JIRAM data that will be collected during future (and even closer) flybys of Io. Past NASA missions of exploration that have visited the Jovian system (Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons), along with ground-based observations, have located over 150 active volcanoes on Io so far. Scientists estimate that about another 250 or so are waiting to be discovered.

Juno has logged nearly 146 million miles (235 million kilometers) since entering Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. Juno’s 13th science pass will be on July 16.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet’s cloud tops — as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. The Italian Space Agency (ASI), contributed two instruments, a Ka-band frequency translator (KaT) and the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM). Lockheed Martin Space, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California. </s> (CN) – Early results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter reveal Earth-sized polar cyclones, a “fuzzy” core and a massive, irregularly shaped magnetic field – all of which challenge previously held theories on the solar system’s largest planet.

The findings are detailed in more than 40 papers discussing the surprising data from NASA’s mission to Jupiter, which reveal greater complexity and variability than scientists had expected.

“It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA.

Launched Aug. 5, 2011, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, Juno made a gravity-assist flyby of Earth in October 2013 to generate enough speed to complete its roundabout 1.7-billion-mile voyage to Jupiter. The spacecraft successfully braked into a highly elliptical orbit around the gas giant in April 2016.

The information retrieved during Juno’s first data-collection pass on Aug. 27 – when the spacecraft flew within 2,600 miles of Jupiter’s swirling cloud tops – will likely fuel considerable speculation and analysis of the planet as scientists await data from subsequent passes.

“We knew going in that Jupiter would throw us some curves,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.”

Among the surprising discoveries provided by Juno are Earth-sized swirling storms that cover both of Jupiter’s poles.

“We’re puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn’t look like the south pole,” Bolton said. “We’re questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage and over the next year we’re going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”

Data from the Aug. 27, 2016, pass also show that Jupiter’s iconic belts and zones are unique and mysterious, with the belt near the equator spanning through the planet’s atmosphere, while the belts and zones at other latitudes seem to lead to other structures. The information suggests the ammonia in the gas giant’s atmosphere varies and continues to increase as far down as could be seen by Juno’s microwave radiometer, which is a few hundred miles.

While scientists knew Jupiter features the most intense magnetic field in the solar system, measurements of the planet’s magnetosphere indicate that it is even stronger than models predicted – and more irregular in shape. The data show that the magnetic field is about 10 times stronger than the strongest magnetic field found on Earth.

“Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we’ve never had before,” said Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator. “Already we see that the magnetic field looks lumpy; it is stronger in some places and weaker in others. This uneven distribution suggests that the field might be generated by dynamo action closer to the surface, above the layer of metallic hydrogen. Every flyby we execute gets us closer to determining where and how Jupiter’s dynamo works.”

Another question Juno is supposed to help answer is whether it has a core. Scientists have presented competing theories, which range from Jupiter having a small, compact core roughly the size of Earth, to the gas giant having formed without a core entirely. The data suggest the presence of a non-discrete, “fuzzy” core. Researchers say more information is needed to develop a precise understanding of the planet’s center.

As the scientific community digests the first results from Juno, further missions will likely add to the revelations described Thursday.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” Bolton said. “On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system – one that every school kid knows – Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

“If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments.” </s> New Delhi: NASA's Juno mission has completed a fruitful 10-month-long journey in Jupiter's orbit and in this short while, the spacecraft has proven that the 5-year wait for it to nestle itself into the giant planet's orbit wasn't in vain.

Ever since, Juno has been beaming back some amazing data on the planet as well as giving space enthusiasts spectacular visual treats from time to time.

This time, however, Juno has delivered its first science results which represent the solar system's largest planet as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought.

“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey,” NASA reported.

From 2011 to 2016 – from the year Juno was launched, till the time it entered Jupiter's orbit – the findings from the first data-collection pass, which flew within about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) of Jupiter's swirling cloud tops on August 27, are being published this week in two papers in the journal Science, as well as 44 papers in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We knew, going in, that Jupiter would throw us some curves,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.”

The images captured by Juno's trusty imager, JunoCam, has also changed scientists' assumptions by showing how both of Jupiter's poles are covered in Earth-sized swirling storms that are densely clustered and rubbing together.

“We're puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn't look like the south pole,” said Bolton. “We're questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage, and over the next year, we're going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?” NASA said.

According to the US space agency, Another surprise comes from Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR), which samples the thermal microwave radiation from Jupiter’s atmosphere, from the top of the ammonia clouds to deep within its atmosphere. The MWR data indicates that Jupiter’s iconic belts and zones are mysterious, with the belt near the equator penetrating all the way down, while the belts and zones at other latitudes seem to evolve to other structures. The data suggest the ammonia is quite variable and continues to increase as far down as we can see with MWR, which is a few hundred miles or kilometers.

Prior to the Juno mission, it was known that Jupiter had the most intense magnetic field in the solar system. Measurements of the massive planet’s magnetosphere, from Juno’s magnetometer investigation (MAG), indicate that Jupiter’s magnetic field is even stronger than models expected, and more irregular in shape. MAG data indicates the magnetic field greatly exceeded expectations at 7.766 Gauss, about 10 times stronger than the strongest magnetic field found on Earth.

Juno is in a polar orbit around Jupiter, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the gas giant. But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a two-hour transit (from pole to pole) flying north to south with its eight science instruments collecting data and its JunoCam public outreach camera snapping pictures. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the transit can take 1.5 days.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” said Bolton. “On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system – one that every school kid knows – Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments,” the NASA report said.
NASA's Juno probe, in orbit around Jupiter, enters safe mode.