In October 2013, NASA’s Juno
spacecraft flew past the Earth to steal some energy for a ride to
Jupiter. Along the way, it also stole some glimpses of home.
To reach the outer planets in our solar system, mission planners
usually chart a path that sends a spacecraft toward other small planets
or the asteroid belt before falling back toward Earth by gravity. The
technique allows the spacecraft to use natural gravity and momentum
to increase its speed relative to the Sun and slingshot toward the
outer solar system. In the case of Juno, the spacecraft received a boost
in speed of more than 3.9 kilometers per second (8,800 miles per hour).
The top image above was captured on October 9, 2013, by JunoCam,
which was designed to take images of Jupiter in visible light. Much of
South America is visible on the sunlit limb of Earth, while the rest of
the hemisphere is in darkness and not shown. JunoCam was one of several
instruments tested during the Earth flyby to ensure that they work as
designed upon arrival at Jupiter.
The composite view of the Earth and Moon (second image) was captured
by low-resolution cameras that were designed to track faint stars and
orient spacecraft sensors. The cameras are located near the tip of one
of Juno’s solar-array arms and are part of the spacecraft’s Magnetic
Field Investigation. Earth and the Moon came into view when Juno was
about 966,000 kilometers (600,000 miles) away. Note how the Moon’s
position relative to Earth changes because the Moon was moving and the
spacecraft was approaching both.
“If Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise
said, ‘Take us home, Scotty,’ this is what the crew would see,” said
Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. “In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space.”
A Juno Earth flyby movie,
assembled from the series of still images captured by Juno, appears
below. The musical accompaniment is an original score by Vangelis.
NASA VIDEO
Juno was launched from Kennedy Space Center on August 5, 2011. It is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
NASA JPL images courtesy of Caltech/Mailin Space Science Systems. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.
- Instrument:
- Juno - JunoCam
NASA: Getting a Little Boost from Home - 01.04.13
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