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NASA's Juno, Armored Tank Heading For Jupiter
coondoggie writes "When it comes to ensuring that its upcoming Juno spacecraft can survive its mission, NASA is surrounding the spacecraft's electronic innards with titanium to ward off mission-threatening radiation. Juno's so-called radiation vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds), has walls that measure about a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass. About the size of an SUV's trunk — encloses Juno's command and data handling box, power and data distribution unit and about 20 other electronic assemblies, according to NASA."
has walls that measure about a square meter (nearly 9 square feet)
Is that really how American's say it?
1 meter = 3.2808399 feet. Wouldn't that make it ~3.2 Square feet? Or do you guys take off the square from the unit somehow, and apply it to the number, So a square meter would be 3.2808399 squared, or 10.76391044943201 (so closer to 11 feet than 9).
I just...
No seriously whats going on here?
Why don't we simply let the Japanese Space Agency send a humanoid robot? ;)
Gundams are long overdue anyway!
It's not fat, It's thick plated!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
But if you hold it the wrong way it blocks the antenna
"Juniper" has 63 moons, eh?
it is just screaming for a pewpewpew tag!
Does the antenna still work if you hold this?
Shoot if off before congress kills this project too!
Per the measurements given (18kg/(1m^2 * 1cm)) the vault's density is 1.8 grams per cubic centimeter. This is much less dense than aluminum (or steel or lead obviously) - anyone know what the vault is made from?
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Just don't confuse metric with english units lest you miss Mars by a few 100,000 units of whatever
(oh, that's already been done: ref http://www.jamesoberg.com/mars/loss.html )
why are we reading it on the advertising shitfest that is networkworld ?
Give 'em hell! USA! USA!
is going to need new tools if they need to get through a titanium box for repairs...
"about 200 kilograms (500 pounds), has walls that measure about a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass. About the size of an SUV's trunk "
I notice a few issues in this description, which also appears in the article. Some fact-checking might be in order.
How can a single thing be 200 kg, and also be 18 kg? You would think that a single thing would have only one mass.
Then, of course, a square meter is slightly more than 10 square feet.
How can a single square meter of material be made into all six sides of a box the size of a SUV trunk, without slicing it into thinner sheets. A square meter might make one side of such a box, but not all six. If all six sides of a cube total 1 square meter, each side would be about 40.8 cm square. Of course, the box doesn't have to be a cube, but the sum of the areas of the six sides still cannot exceed the total of the material.
Titanium has density of 4.5 g/cm^3. So a 100x100x1 cm piece of it would be 45 kg, not 18 kg.
If this thing crashes on takeoff, someone's going to have to stop it.
Asimov's ZZ-1, ZZ-2, and ZZ-3 now have a companion! Can we call it ZZ-4?
for those who havent seen it in action. if the math is correct we tend to affirm our intention to have visited the planet. should the math be flagrantly bogus, a press statement is quickly issued to confirm our original intent to send millions of dollars of exotic probe hardware hurtling into the surface of a far away world for science.
if you're a space alien, dont worry. eventually a probe will either land or explode violently on your homeworld. its the intergalactic equivalent of throwing rocks down a dark alley to make friends.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This whole story could use one.
Nullius in verba
"Juniper has 63 moons." I didn't know moons needed routers!
Ordinarily, we don't hear about shielding, certainly not about a titanium tank to shield those electrtonics. Crap, they should have welded some A-10 cockpit tubs together...
Is this because NASA is using some COTS electronics on this mission? In the 'old days', we saw hardened electronics being used. Or is it a unique mission requirement, beyond what the old probes did?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The mission site is here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/spacecraft/index.html Includes pictures and better information, including Monday's press release, (which happens to be the source of the ft^3 m^3 units in the linked article): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/news/juno20100712.html
Shielding is titanium, as lead wouldn't survive liftoff "too soft to withstand the vibrations of launch" and other materials were "were too difficult to work with".
Cables between electronics are shielded in copper or stainless braid, and smaller electronics sections have their own shields.
SUV's don't have trunks!
What, expecting a metric system rant?
"According to NASA Jupiter has sizzling radiation belts surrounding its equatorial region and extend out past one of its moons, Europa, about 650,000 kilometers (400,000 miles) out from the top of Jupiter's clouds.
"Juniper has 63 moons."
If this tank probe thing crashes back to earth, it could reek havoc. What are you going to do then, send some sort of cyborg superman to attach it to a skycrane and detonate a nuclear bomb beside it to destroy it?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The article links to some kind of 'ooh, look at me' article instead of NASA's own page on Juno.
Juno Armored Up to Go to Jupiter
Not exactly good maths there, so probably a PR piece from a 'journalist'.
9 foot^2 = 0.84 m^2. Could be correct, though I wouldn't use "nearly" for something that far off. And it's impossible to tell if the walls are really 9 foot^2 and they just made a very rough guestimate of the metric equivalent.
1/3 inch = 0.85 cm
Again, that could be right. It might be exactly 1/3rd inch and they guestimated that to about 1 cm. But it's still 15% off.
40 lbs = 18.14 kg
And then you hit something where the weight is actually correct. But since they've messed up that much on the other two, we now don't know if it's exactly 40 lbs or exactly 18 kg.
Hell, we don't even know if the NASA guys who wrote this are incompetent or not. Well, we know they're incompetent, we even know how much (about 15%).
However, the NASA page seemingly being written by an 8-year-old with a bad understanding of units, doesn't really justify linking to an article that is essentially a copy of NASA's page, and especially not when there is no attribution or links to the original article.
"About the size of an SUV's trunk..."
SUV's don't have trunks, they are generally hatchbacks with enclosed cargo areas.
I get it. The linked-to blog post (what is supposed to be TFA) is being supplied as an example of how to break every rule of English grammar, right? Likewise, the summary is an example of how to make a Slashdot summary by copying and pasting the first paragraph of TF"A".
What's glaring at me from these numbers is that at about 40lbs / side and with a total weight of ~500lbs it must be a dodecahedron (a 12-sided volume)
On a related note, there's a bill in the Senate which will be voted on tomorrow (Thursday) morning which threatens to reduce the proposed funding for robotic missions (like the one described in the summary), commercial crew, and space technology in favor of building a government-designed heavy-lift rocket instead. The Planetary Society has an update describing the situation and is urging people who care about space exploration to call their Senators immediately:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002584/
More background info on the bill: http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/07/14/a-quick-review-of-the-senate-nasa-authorization-bill/
For the curious, Bill Nye the Science Guy (the new director of the Planetary Society) and Louis Friedman are hosting a webcast/discussion at 5pm ET today about the future direction of NASA:
http://planetary.org/about/press/releases/2010/0712_Where_Should_We_Go_in_Space_Tell_Bill.html
Wouldn't it be easier just to travel at night?
200kg is approximate, and no, it does not include the mass of the contents. And, the actual dimensions aren't a regular cube of 1 meter size, nor are the walls a uniform thickness.
In most spacecraft design (including this one) the enclosure has ribs and cutouts to accommodate the hardware attached, as well as provide appropriate shielding AND for stiffness for vibration loads.
"has walls that measure about a square meter "
so not a square meter, but /about/ a square meter. it could be 7.5 centimeters shy of a meter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How come whenever someone mentions feet to m conversions (which really seldom happens), it's like... 30,000 feet or 9,144m -- and when the reverse happens, it's all just nice numbers?
FTFY:
200 kg or 440.93 lb (eew, how pounds are fugly!)
1 m or 10.76 sq ft (can't you use a unit which yields simpler numbers?)
18 kg or 39.68 lb (it's even easier to say just "eighteen"!)
Suck it up, USians, Liberians and Myanmarians!
Because when this accidentally crashes to earth, we're gonna need a bionic super-agent to defeat it.
This appears to be part of the ongoing fracas over manned vs. unmanned exploration. People somehow got it into their heads that there will only be money for one in these days of tightened belts, so they split into factions and started publicly fighting about it.
The problem I have with this is that when it goes to congress the unmanned-supporters will vote to kill the manned missions and the manned-supporters will vote to kill the manned missions, and the budget-demagoging Republicans will vote as a block against both. So nothing will pass.
In fighting over the leftover pieces like this, NASA supporters are going to lose the entire pie.