NASA’s Juno Probe Sets Distance Record For Solar-Powered Spacecraft

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NASA’s Jupiter probe has set a new record, making it humankind’s most distant solar-powered spacecraft, a record previously held by the European Space Agency’s comet-hunting Rosetta mission.

This week, the Juno probe reached 493 million miles (793 million km) from the sun and is expected to arrive at Jupiter on 4 July 2016.

Launched in 2011, the four-ton probe is the first solar-powered spacecraft designed to operate so far away from the sun.

Juno is equipped with three massive 9m-long solar arrays, packing a whopping 18,698 individual solar cells.

“Jupiter is five times farther from the sun than Earth, and the sunlight that reaches that far out packs 25 times less punch,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno’s project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“While our massive solar arrays will be generating only 500 watts when we are at Jupiter, Juno is very efficiently designed, and it will be more than enough to get the job done,” he added.

On its arrival at Jupiter, Juno will spend the following year orbiting the Jovian planet 33 times.

The probe will dip beneath Jupiter’s obscuring cloud cover to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure and atmosphere as well as the surrounding area of space that is affected by its magnetic pull.

Previously, eight spacecraft have ventured out as far as Jupiter, but all were sustained by nuclear power sources, rather then solar panels.

NASA’s Juno Probe Sets Distance Record For Solar-Powered Spacecraft - Yahoo News