The space probe NASA Juno set a distance record flight with solar batteries
The American space probe Juno set a distance record in space when working on solar batteries. Scientific apparatus, launched in 2011 to Jupiter, retired from the Sun 793 million km. During the mission, Juno maximum distance from the Sun will be 832 million kilometers. Station surpassed the previous achievement, which belonged to the European probe Rosetta, made a journey to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. "This was made possible by the special structure and high efficiency solar cells.
The station is equipped with three 9-foot panels, batteries, consisting of 18,698 individual cells. On Earth, their total capacity up to 14 kW.
However, Jupiter is five times further from the Sun than the Earth, and the power of sunlight there is 25 times weaker. Therefore, giant solar panels Juno will generate there only 500 watts, but this will be more than enough for the machine to cope with the task.
He is to enter the orbit of Jupiter on July 4 this year, and 12 months to make around 33 turns. During this time the station is equipped with various devices and weighing about 4 tons, it will have to look through a thick layer of clouds of gas giant and transmit to Earth information about its structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Scientists want to, in particular, to test the hypothesis of a solid core of Jupiter and believe that in any case will have unique data that will help to better understand the processes of formation of not only the largest planet of the solar system, but the entire universe. During the mission, Juno maximum distance from the Sun will be 832 million kilometers. So far into space before it climbed only eight devices, but they have used nuclear batteries, thermoelectric generators, or isotopes. Build a space station NASA commissioned by the company Lockheed Martin.