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New Spacecraft Set For Dangerous Jupiter Trip
solaGratia passes along word of the equipping of Juno, the most heavily armored craft ever to be launched to another planet. The launch is scheduled for a year from now. "In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. ... 'For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays,' said... Juno's radiation control manager... [The] titanium box — 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. The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds)."
To look for the monolith of course.
to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)
How we know is more important than what we know.
An SUV doesn't have a trunk.
what's the purpose of its mission?
Wikipedia say:
The spacecraft will be placed in a polar orbit to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.
As to the big "why" as in "why this instead of spending money on something else"...Jupiter is the big laboratory in our solar system. Studying it lets us lets us collect data which will help us study places where terrestrial data alone leaves things a bit fuzzy. It helps us verify the models we're already relying upon. We can make some guesses based solely on what we can observe from Earth - some extremely good guesses. But Jupiter is the big checksum in the sky. Is our understanding of the behavior of the Earth's magnetic field correct? Do our existing models hold up well for a stronger field? Do all these weird patterns we see on the surface of Jupiter and the predictions and assumptions we've made about the forces driving them hold up if we take a lot of new data from a closer vantage point? Are our assumptions about the formation of the solar system valid - and thus most of the assumptions we start with when examining more distant objects?
If you're the kind of person who can't see the value in something which doesn't directly translate into new gadgets - where do you think the technology in the cell phone (or replacement device) you'll own 20 years from now is going to come from? New technological developments are predicated upon basic scientific research. Sure, you can come up with rocks and fire and a few other nice toys without understanding why they work. Maybe god did it, or a wizard, who knows. But modern technology doesn't really work that way, it's far too complicated. Your computer is based upon a number of scientists and engineers understanding what's going on in terms of quantum mechanics, solid state physics, chemistry...not to mention loads of math. You wouldn't be online to question this without people doing basic scientific research.
Besides, the best and most human reason to go is because it's there. How could we not?
It's uglier than you can imagine.
IIRC (sorry, it was long ago)... on the Pioneer 10//F 11/G missions Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope for an order-of-magnitude more than expected, and we pegged them. Pioneer suffered significantly--never regained full range on one channel of the IPP (Imaging Photopolarimeter--that thing that made the pretty pictures possible).
We nearly lost the spacecraft due to some spurious crap/commands during periapsis on Pioneer 10/F. Try dealing with an idiot-savant-brain-damaged-two-year-old throwing a tantrum with ~90-minute round-trip light time at 256-1024bps. It's ugly.
The running joke was... If you want to be absolutely certain a spacecraft is sterile, just make a flyby of Jupiter. Jupiter's belts are not to be taken lightly. A seriously understated quote from one post-mission presentation "Closest approach: It’s hot in there!"
It's not just hot, it's a red-hot-poker enema in your electronic guts. That Pioneer 10/11 F/G--the epitome of cheap deep-space exploration--survived those encounters and lived to tell--and did so for many more years still amazes me.
It is a testament to what we can do, and what deep-space exploration is all about. (So allow me a bit of hubris: Suck eggs Voyager... you had a much bigger budget, you got the press, you got your name in a Star Trek movie, but we were there first. Nah nah nah.)