New Spacecraft Set For Dangerous Jupiter Trip

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

To look for the monolith of course.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Martin Blank]

It does when an elephant is driving.

100 million dental X-rays

[R.Mo_Robert]

100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?

those are good questions

[circletimessquare]

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...

[SheeEttin]

Heh... reminds me of a joke.

How many elephants can you fit in a Volkswagen Beetle?
Four. Two in the front, two in the back.

...which is the set-up to the real joke:

How can you tell when there's an elephant in your fridge?
- There's elephant prints in the butter.
How can you tell when there's TWO elephants in your fridge?
- There's two sets of prints in the butter.
How can you tell when there's THREE elephants in your fridge?
- The door won't close.
How can you tell when there's FOUR elephants in your fridge?
- There's a Volkswagen Beetle in your driveway.

Re:those are good questions

[QuantumG]

Fat planet eats too many sweets.

no, no, no

[circletimessquare]

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.

[CrashandDie]

Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope

Oh man, I remember that concert, it was just absolutely insane.

Re:SUV trunks?

[oliverthered]

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

[dangitman]

Well, in this case it would be Librarians of Congress with tooth decay per fortnight.

Re:SUV trunks?

[loufoque]

Has the US population degraded to the point that we can't figure out what a square meter is? Do we need to measure volume in terms of SUV trunks?

It seems to have degraded to the point of confusing surface and volume.
Volume is in cube meters.

The purpose of the mission

[bugs2squash]

Is to search for the other Juno that was described here [slashdot.org]. As the first SUV is now several light-library_of_congresses away and could be anywhere within a volume of 10^76 cubic football fields of its projected location.

Re:dangerous?

[sjames]

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.