Since the Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter for almost five years – July 4, 2016 – you may have forgotten that time in 2013 when Juno passed Earth. The spaceship needed a little extra thrust to reach Jupiter, so it used Earth as a gravity assist. Picture editor Kevin Gill reminded us of this flyby with some breathtaking, newly edited pictures of the earth, captured by the JunoCam, the “Citizen Science” camera on board. Indeed a light blue point!
Juno flew past Earth on October 9, 2013 and received a speed boost of more than 3.9 kilometers per second (about 8,800 mph). Scientists also used the flyby to test the camera and give it its first warm-up in space to take pictures of a colorful planet.
Image of Earth captured by the JunoCam on the Juno spacecraft during a gravity-assisted Earth flyby on October 9, 2013. Photo credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.
The flyby also gave amateur photo editors a warm-up for using Junocam images. Because JunoCam was designed as a collaboration between Mission scientists and the public, the JunoCam images will be sent back to Earth and posted on the Mission Juno website where the public can download them for later image processing. The images edited by Citizen Scientists will then be published on the Juno website. They range from detailed scientific images and analysis to beautiful works of art on the subject of space.
“The idea of combining our scientific imaging and understanding of the planet with artistic depictions of not only the importance of the planet but also exploration was very valuable to the mission and the public,” said Paul Steffes of Georgie Tech, one of Juno’s -Science researcher.
Image of Earth captured by the JunoCam on the Juno spacecraft during a gravity-assisted Earth flyby on October 9, 2013. Photo credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.
Juno took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 5, 2011. Juno’s launcher was able to give the spacecraft just enough energy to reach the asteroid belt, at which point the sun’s gravity pulled it back toward the inner solar system. Mission planners designed the oscillation through the earth as a gravity assist to increase the speed of the spacecraft relative to the sun so it could reach Jupiter.
You can see all of the JunoCam Citizen Science images here, and see more of Kevin’s great work on his Flickr page.
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