How NASA Saved a Camera From 370 Million Miles Away (phys.org) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.org: The mission team of NASA's Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft executed a deep-space move in December 2023 to repair its JunoCam imager to capture photos of the Jovian moon Io. Results from the long-distance save were presented during a technical session on July 16 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nuclear & Space Radiation Effects Conference in Nashville. JunoCam is a color, visible-light camera. The optical unit for the camera is located outside a titanium-walled radiation vault, which protects sensitive electronic components for many of Juno's engineering and science instruments. This is a challenging location because Juno's travels carry it through the most intense planetary radiation fields in the solar system. While mission designers were confident JunoCam could operate through the first eight orbits of Jupiter, no one knew how long the instrument would last after that. Throughout Juno's first 34 orbits (its prime mission), JunoCam operated normally, returning images the team routinely incorporated into the mission's science papers. Then, during its 47th orbit, the imager began showing hints of radiation damage. By orbit 56, nearly all the images were corrupted.
While the team knew the issue might be tied to radiation, pinpointing what was specifically damaged within JunoCam was difficult from hundreds of millions of miles away. Clues pointed to a damaged voltage regulator that was vital to JunoCam's power supply. With few options for recovery, the team turned to a process called annealing, where a material is heated for a specified period before slowly cooling. Although the process is not well understood, the idea is that heating can reduce defects in the material. Soon after the annealing process finished, JunoCam began cranking out crisp images for the next several orbits. But Juno was flying deeper and deeper into the heart of Jupiter's radiation fields with each pass. By orbit 55, the imagery had again begun showing problems.
"After orbit 55, our images were full of streaks and noise," said JunoCam instrument lead Michael Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems. "We tried different schemes for processing the images to improve the quality, but nothing worked. With the close encounter of Io bearing down on us in a few weeks, it was Hail Mary time: The only thing left we hadn't tried was to crank JunoCam's heater all the way up and see if more extreme annealing would save us." Test images sent back to Earth during the annealing showed little improvement in the first week. Then, with the close approach of Io only days away, the images began to improve dramatically. By the time Juno came within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the volcanic moon's surface on Dec. 30, 2023, the images were almost as good as the day the camera launched, capturing detailed views of Io's north polar region that revealed mountain blocks covered in sulfur dioxide frosts rising sharply from the plains and previously uncharted volcanoes with extensive flow fields of lava. To date, the solar-powered spacecraft has orbited Jupiter 74 times. Recently, the image noise returned during Juno's 74th orbit.
While the team knew the issue might be tied to radiation, pinpointing what was specifically damaged within JunoCam was difficult from hundreds of millions of miles away. Clues pointed to a damaged voltage regulator that was vital to JunoCam's power supply. With few options for recovery, the team turned to a process called annealing, where a material is heated for a specified period before slowly cooling. Although the process is not well understood, the idea is that heating can reduce defects in the material. Soon after the annealing process finished, JunoCam began cranking out crisp images for the next several orbits. But Juno was flying deeper and deeper into the heart of Jupiter's radiation fields with each pass. By orbit 55, the imagery had again begun showing problems.
"After orbit 55, our images were full of streaks and noise," said JunoCam instrument lead Michael Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems. "We tried different schemes for processing the images to improve the quality, but nothing worked. With the close encounter of Io bearing down on us in a few weeks, it was Hail Mary time: The only thing left we hadn't tried was to crank JunoCam's heater all the way up and see if more extreme annealing would save us." Test images sent back to Earth during the annealing showed little improvement in the first week. Then, with the close approach of Io only days away, the images began to improve dramatically. By the time Juno came within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the volcanic moon's surface on Dec. 30, 2023, the images were almost as good as the day the camera launched, capturing detailed views of Io's north polar region that revealed mountain blocks covered in sulfur dioxide frosts rising sharply from the plains and previously uncharted volcanoes with extensive flow fields of lava. To date, the solar-powered spacecraft has orbited Jupiter 74 times. Recently, the image noise returned during Juno's 74th orbit.
RSS Feed Not Working Again ... (Score:5, Informative)
Hey Slashdot,
The RSS feeds are not working again.
Right now, the feed looks like this [pastebin.com].
There are 6 more stories on the front page, newer than the SoftBank and OpenAI story.
The oldest that is not in the RSS feed is from last 23:30 on July 21st, and now it is 9:15am.
I reported this a few days ago [slashdot.org], and was marked 'Troll', and 'OffTopic'.
For those who are hasty with moderation points, how else can someone report a site issue, when Slashdot has no place for it?
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Have you tried baking it for a few hours, then letting it cool off?
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Seems that when they get baked for a few hours they start posting RSS on pastebin. I think they've had enough baking for today.
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I tried but yo momma wasn't hot enough.
feedback@slashdot.org not working either then? (Score:3)
I reported this a few days ago [slashdot.org], and was marked 'Troll', and 'OffTopic'.
For those who are hasty with moderation points, how else can someone report a site issue, when Slashdot has no place for it?
I'm not complaining about your post at all but is feedback@slashdot.org not working or not checked anymore? As I understand this email address is at least what is intended for stuff like this although I have no idea whether it's still active or checked or not.
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Thanks for pointing this out.
It will do, but it also lacks any community input ("Oh, I have this problem but solved it by ...", or "Works for me ...", and so on ...
I emailed them, and got an autoreponse.
And it seems the RSS just started working again.
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And it seems the RSS just started working again.
Well then it seems like either way they likely heard you. Good work.
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Helium (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, it's at the bottom of a gravity well some (I don't have my notes to hand, thumbnailing it) 4 times deeper than Earths, which is energy you have to expend to get it "up" to interplanetary potentials. Plus the technical challenges of "scooping" the planet's atmosphere.
It'll have to compete with terrestrial sources (I see HeliumONE had a PR announcement about their Tanzania drilling programme a few days ago), as well as the byproduct stream form processing comets and "volatiles" from comets and
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Hmmm. Which satellite is likely to give the highest yield of helium? Something with a sub-surface ocean, but which has never been hot enough to melt all the way to surface (generally).
Again, without my notebook (on the wrong logical computer) I'm back-of-the-thumbnailing, but Europa, Callisto and Ganymede all have SSOs, and Europa is the smallest, so easiest to launch from. But ... it matters if it's ice crust is thicker or thinner than Callisto's. It matters a lot.
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The real value of hydrocarbons available off earth will be the manufacture of soft/flexible components. All flexible seals, hoses, fabric, etc. will eventually need to be manufactured in space, assuming civilization manages to survive long enough to extend off planet.
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Not just the soft goods. Almost everything that doesn't have to be metal will be plastics, because the energy costs of smelting ores to metals, then processing and forging/ casting them, are so much higher than for doing organic chemistry at non-glowing temperatures.
Outside launch from a planet or large satellite, you don't need high power or high acceleration in space. Star Wars Trek notwithstanding.
Interesting craft (Score:3)
Re:Interesting craft (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently it was just too costly to purchase the plutonium for a RTG in part because of the short supply at the time. Not so easy to run a heater with an anemic power supply, RTGs are definitely the more robust and effective choice for power supply in craft beyond mars.
The problem is not just cost. People forget plutonium used today is man-made as it does not naturally exist in nature on Earth in appreciable quantities. The US stopped making it in 1988 as the largest use is in nuclear weapons. Ironically the largest source since 1988 had been Russia but they stopped manufacturing it too. The end of the cold war meant there was no need to build new weapons. The US only restarted production in 2019 in small quantities for uses like RTG. Juno was launched in 2011.
Re: Interesting craft (Score:1)
Very interesting, thanks
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Supply and cost go hand-in-hand in normal economics. But for Pu-238, normal economics go out the window: it's not like you can just dig more from the ground, like iron or lithium. As a synthetic radioisotope - a byproduct of nuclear weapons production, no less - when the supply dries up that's it, there is no more to be purchased at any price. You can make more, but NASA has no capabilit
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The polar-ish orbit isn't wholly responsible for the radiation problems. Jupiter's radiation environment is brutal at all (magnetic) latitudes. It's worse over the poles, but it fries electronics (and would fry people, absent a *lot* of heavy shielding).
Humans will probably walk on Titan before the walk on Ganymede. And Io-walking, being so deep into the radiation belts, is never going to compete with thermonuclear tiddlywinks as a popular pastime.
Try hitting it (Score:2)
So they basically did the equivalent of hitting until it starting working again.
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eHan
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This seems a little bit more like the towel trick for the Xbox 360.
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Nope. Annealing a material has been a way of getting defects to realign and "relax" since ... probably about 4000 BP. Even before the bronze age combined arsenic ores and copper ores (later replacing arsenic with tin smelted off-site) to make bronze, copper was being used as a structural metal and the Egyptians learned there was a sweet spot between being "fresh from the forge" (relatively soft), through lightly "work hardened" before it became excessively work hardened, and fractured. When it would need re
Meanwhile (Score:5, Informative)
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If any kind of comment is reflexive and unthinking, it's this kind. necro18's comment makes a point. Yours just cries that he was... what... making a point? Not everything Trump does is good. Seeing as you can't admit that, you're the one in a cult.
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[Trump-cultist voice] Serves them pinko-commie-subresives right for scaring Amerikuh with warnings about climate change from space-based globally uniform data sets. Every MAGA know that if you don't measure it, it doesn't exist.
I'm slightly surprised he didn't shut down the whole agency. That's probably next year's plan.
Excellent. (Score:2)
This article is exactly why I am still on Slashdot.
Malin Space Science Systems (Score:2)
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Sounds like a good research project (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it poorly understood? Sounds like a phenomenon itchin' to be studied.
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Studying it would be expensive and the "don't put electronics in extreme radiation environments" solution to the problem nearly always works.
Not saying as it isn't cool; it sounds cool as hell to figure out. But there are only so many people to figure things out...
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Maybe you are jesting, but the article mentions applying Juno maintenance & survival lessons to Earth satellites and military equipment, both of which can suffer radiation damage. Consider EMP weapons, for one.
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It isn't poorly understood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I suspect we have a journalism-trying-to-report-science-they-don't-understand thing. I wish "Science Journalist" was a thing, especially as when you get science explained by people like Phil Plait etc they're actually good at writing stuff that's interesting and accurate.
But even if every news org has a "Science Correspondent" who actually was qualified to do the job, the state of the industry right now is that they'd be getting rid of them as a c
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It is a thing. There are ... about 4 or 5 on each of "Nature" and Science ; maybe 10 times that many in the rest of the science press (American Scientist, Scientific American, New Scientist, Sky and Telescope. Geoscientist's journalist (and editor retired about 5 years ago and wasn't replaced. Guess the global population is a few dozen. Median age probably in their 50s or 60s. Recruitment - close to nil. Profitability, nil.
Ah - there's the problem. Profitability. If "p
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See my comment a little up-thread. Keyword : "petrological" - I doubt that has appeared in any other posts in this thread.
Annealing itself is pretty well understood. It's effect on radiation damage in electronics, less so. They'll also be working at the "low-T, long-t" end of materials science, whereas metalworkers (and metamorphic petrologists) tend to work more at the higher-T end of the range. Though we geologists tend to go to "long-t" too - million year exsolution of iron phases in a cooling asteroid c