New Spacecraft Set For Dangerous Jupiter Trip 159
solaGratia passes along word of the equipping of Juno, the most heavily armored craft ever to be launched to another planet. The launch is scheduled for a year from now. "In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. ... 'For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays,' said... Juno's radiation control manager... [The] titanium box — about the size of an SUV's trunk — encloses Juno's command and data handling box..., power and data distribution unit..., and about 20 other electronic assemblies. The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds)."
Re:why? (Score:5, Funny)
To look for the monolith of course.
Re:SUV's trunk... (Score:5, Funny)
It does when an elephant is driving.
100 million dental X-rays (Score:4, Funny)
100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?
those are good questions (Score:4, Funny)
but from the story summary, i think the most pressing question would be why the heck does jupiter have millions of dental X-rays?
Re:SUV's trunk... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:those are good questions (Score:5, Funny)
Fat planet eats too many sweets.
no, no, no (Score:3, Funny)
as we know from 2001/ 2010 a space odyssey, enough black monoliths and jupiter will finally ignite and become a second sun. but the question is: what are those black monoliths? and, we finally have our answer: dental x-ray machines, alien dental x-ray machines. that is what inspired pre-homo sapiens species to begin the journey to modern man: the divine inspiration of advanced dental technology
Re:It's uglier than you can imagine. (Score:3, Funny)
Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope
Oh man, I remember that concert, it was just absolutely insane.
Re:SUV trunks? (Score:3, Funny)
I suppose they could have used 2 hours in a microwave or 40 years under a tanning lamp. But then the radiation may well be x-rays (though they say they tested using a gamer ray source).
It may have been better to put it in terms of how bright the equivalent aura would be if earth had that much radiation in it's atmosphere.
But the article was written by a dentist who drives an SUV, so I doubt he'd have know about things like that.
Re:100 million dental X-rays (Score:5, Funny)
Well, in this case it would be Librarians of Congress with tooth decay per fortnight.
Re:SUV trunks? (Score:5, Funny)
It seems to have degraded to the point of confusing surface and volume.
Volume is in cube meters.
The purpose of the mission (Score:3, Funny)
Re:dangerous? (Score:3, Funny)
The free market can sort this out. Given the crazy costs of healthcare in the U.S. these days it won't be long before the uninsured resort to taking a trip to Jupiter to get their teeth X-rayed. If NASA is really nice, they can probably get them to take the space probes with them, especially if they share gas money.