After a five-year journey through the solar system, NASA’s Juno spacecraft is scheduled for orbital insertion on Monday, July 4th. Due to the time delay between Earth and Jupiter, the insertion will be in the hands of the computers aboard the spacecraft, and mission specialists will have to wait 48 minutes to know if it was a success.

Sounds a lot like those long moments of terror when Curiosity plunged towards Mars four years ago.

If all goes well, Juno will study Jupiter (less so its moons) using orbital maneuvers much like the spacecraft Cassini has used in the Saturn system for the past twelve years.

Here is the Juno arrival timeline in EDT and GMT:

http://www.space.com/33333-juno-spacecraft-jupiter-arrival-timeline.html

Here is the official NASA page on the mission with a countdown and info on using the awesome NASA Eyes app:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

Also, some helpful what-to-expect/how to watch info from Space.com and the Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla:

http://www.space.com/33333-juno-spacecraft-jupiter-arrival-timeline.html

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/07011514-how-to-watch-junos-orbit.html

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/06090600-what-to-expect-from-junocam.html

 

Image courtesy of NASA.gov

The basics:

http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-fly-by-a-graphical-guide-to-the-historic-mission-1.17927

Detailed timeline of flyby events:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06240556-what-to-expect-new-horizons-pluto.html

Where to follow progress:

• http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
• http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html (NASA TV)
• Twitter: #PlutoFlyBy, @NASANewHorizons, @NewHorizons2015

ETA: schedule of media events at http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-announces-updated-television-coverage-media-activities-for-pluto-flyby

Also, The Science Channel is going to do a flyby special on the evening of July 15th.

 

Party goodies:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Participate/community/Plutopalooza-Toolkit.php

This is an awesome desktop app for Pluto and other NASA stuff:

http://eyes.nasa.gov/

I am terribly behind in my space geeking. Life has thrown me a couple of curveballs, and there’s been a lot of cool space stuff to fall behind on geeking about.

(1) Lunar Mission One: A kickstarter campaign by a private British group, Lunar Missions Ltd, to send an unmanned robotic landing module to the South Pole of the Moon and drill deep into the rock for a scientific analysis of the the geological composition of the Moon.

http://lunarmissionone.com/

 

(2) Hayabusa 2 launched on December 3rd. It is a Japanese asteroid sample return mission targeted at asteroid 1999 JU3. It is due to arrive in July of 2018 and return to Earth in 2020.

http://global.jaxa.jp/
http://b612.jspec.jaxa.jp/hayabusa2/e/index_e.html

(3) Orion! NASA’s new reusable spacecraft intended for future manned space missions (part of NASA’s plans to return to the Moon, and their Asteroid Retrieval Mission) had its first unmanned test flight on December 5th. It did two orbits around the Earth, then returned safely.

http://www.nasa.gov/orion/

(4) New Horizons, NASA/JPL’s mission to Pluto, woke up last Saturday from a two-year hibernation in preparation for its arrival at Pluto this coming July. It will stay “awake” from here on out, and hopefully get some awesome pictures of the Pluto system before its fly-by. Then it is off to explore another Kuiper Belt Object.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/

http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons/on-plutos-doorstep-new-horizons-spacecraft-awakens-for-encounter/

Image credit: NASA JPL

This morning, I’m really flummoxed that I don’t have that telescope Santa keeps promising me for Christmas. I was out ogling the early morning sky, and it was possible to see comet Siding Spring near Mars then, hours before its closest fly-by (2:27 PM EDT, 11:27 PM PDT, 18:27 GMT). That’s day time in North America, and yet the real irony belongs to Australia, where the comet was originally discovered last year. The comet closest fly-by won’t even be in their sky at all. The Deep Space Network dishes in Europe, the US, and Puerto Rico can watch.

The comet will scrape by Mars at a distance of 82,000 miles. That’s a third of the distance between Earth and the Moon. Comet Siding Spring originates from the Oort Cloud, a cloud of comets that surrounds our sun at a distance almost quarter of the way to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

There are spacecraft in orbit of the planet Mars from the US, the European Space Agency, and India. They will all be ducked behind the far side of the planet during closest comet approach. But as they swing back around, they might still get a bit of comet dust on them. This has the potential to be very, very bad. A tiny spec of comet junk flying at enormous speed could punch holes right through an orbiting tin can like Earthling’s Mars satellites.

Hopefully, though, all they’ll catch are some cool photos.

The rovers on the surface of Mars will be safe due to the Martian atmosphere, but alas, the poor little guys will also experience closest fly-by during daylight hours.

Mars and Siding Spring will become visible again in North America after sunset this evening.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-best-seat-in-the-house-for-sunday-s-comet-flyby-is-mars1/

http://www.space.com/27403-mars-comet-fly-by-orbiters-to-duck-and-cover-behind-planet-video.html

http://earthsky.org/tonight/comet-siding-springs-near-collision-with-mars-on-october-19

http://mars.nasa.gov/comets/sidingspring/

http://www.universetoday.com/115430/watch-live-as-comet-siding-spring-flys-by-mars/

http://www.livestream.com/eurospaceagency

http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/comet-siding-spring-swings-by-on-a-close-approach-to-mars

http://www.livecometdata.com/comets/c2013-a1-siding-spring/