IGIHE

Category: Science &Technology

  • NASA prepares to launch first U.S. Asteroid sample return mission

    {NASA is preparing to launch its first mission to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth. The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.}

    The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and bring a sample back to Earth for intensive study. Launch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

    “This mission exemplifies our nation’s quest to boldly go and study our solar system and beyond to better understand the universe and our place in it,” said Geoff Yoder, acting associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “NASA science is the greatest engine of scientific discovery on the planet and OSIRIS-REx embodies our directorate’s goal to innovate, explore, discover, and inspire.”

    The 4,650-pound (2,110-kilogram) fully-fueled spacecraft will launch aboard an Atlas V 411 rocket during a 34-day launch period that begins Sept. 8, and reach its asteroid target in 2018. After a careful survey of Bennu to characterize the asteroid and locate the most promising sample sites, OSIRIS-REx will collect between 2 and 70 ounces (about 60 to 2,000 grams) of surface material with its robotic arm and return the sample to Earth via a detachable capsule in 2023.

    “The launch of OSIRIS-REx is the beginning a seven-year journey to return pristine samples from asteroid Bennu,” said OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson. “The team has built an amazing spacecraft, and we are well-equipped to investigate Bennu and return with our scientific treasure.”

    OSIRIS-REx has five instruments to explore Bennu:

    OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) — A system consisting of three cameras provided by the University of Arizona, Tucson, will observe Bennu and provide global imaging, sample site imaging, and will witness the sampling event.

    OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) — A scanning LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) contributed by the Canadian Space Agency will be used to measure the distance between the spacecraft and Bennu’s surface, and will map the shape of the asteroid.

    OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer (OTES) — An instrument provided by Arizona State University in Tempe that will investigate mineral abundances and provide temperature information with observations in the thermal infrared spectrum.
    OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) — An instrument provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and designed to measure visible and infrared light from Bennu to identify mineral and organic material.
    Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) — A student experiment provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University in Cambridge, which will observe the X-ray spectrum to identify chemical elements on Bennu’s surface and their abundances.

    Additionally, the spacecraft has two systems that will enable the sample collection and return:

    Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) — An articulated robotic arm with a sampler head, provided by Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, to collect a sample of Bennu’s surface.

    OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule (SRC) — A capsule with a heat shield and parachutes in which the spacecraft will return the asteroid sample to Earth, provided by Lockheed Martin.

    “Our upcoming launch is the culmination of a tremendous amount of effort from an extremely dedicated team of scientists, engineers, technicians, finance and support personnel,” said OSIRIS-REx Project Manager Mike Donnelly at Goddard. “I’m incredibly proud of this team and look forward to launching the mission’s journey to Bennu and back.”

    Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Lockheed Martin Space Systems built the spacecraft. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

    OSIRIS-REx will travel to near-Earth asteroid Benn on a sample return mission.

  • Tiny Stanford invention purifies water in minutes using the sun

    {A device smaller than a postage stamp could make a big impact on the everyday hiker, and possibly developing nations.}

    Is that a piece of bark in your drink? A bug, maybe? Nope. It’s a tiny water-purifying tablet powered by the sun.

    The device comes from scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University’s Institute for Materials and Energy Science. It measures 1 centimeter by 2 centimeters, about the size of half a postage stamp, and decontaminates water fast using a readily available resource — visible light from the sun’s rays.

    The invention could let hikers (and later, people living in developing countries) clean their water quickly without resorting to other power-fueled methods, such as the tried-and-true tactic of boiling water, or an ultraviolet wand, which requires charging.

    Other devices harness the sun’s rays to decontaminate water, but only use UV light, which typically takes anywhere from several hours to two days to work, according to the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology’s Solar Water Disinfection initiative. The Stanford tablet, on the other hand, takes minutes.

    Some 663 million people lack access to clean drinking water, according to the United Nations, and almost 1,000 children a day die from preventable water- and sanitation-related diseases.

    “UV light only counts for 4 percent of the total solar energy,” Chong Liu, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and author of a report on the device, said. “If you can also use visible light, that’s 50 percent of solar energy, so you just use it for free, why not just use most of the solar to do water disinfection and to harness more light and to use it more efficiently?”

    The report appeared in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on Monday.

    The little glass tablet is topped with bits of copper and “nanoflakes” of the industrial lubricant molybdenum disulfide, which under the right conditions, produces a chemical reaction that kills microbes.

    The tablet boasted some striking early results. In a controlled experiment, it killed 99.999 percent of bacteria after 20 minutes with 25 milliliters of water. It can be physically scaled to treat the necessary amount of water, and it’s supposed to cost just a few dollars, according to Liu. The researchers will now test the device in real-world settings and hope it could be commercialized within the next three to five years.

    What’s the catch? The tablet only works (so far) against E.coli and a lactic acid bacteria, not viruses or harmful chemicals like lead. But the team plans to combat other pollutants in later tests.

    “The easiest water we can treat [right now] is in outside activities, when you scoop water from the river and that water is not really cloudy or heavily polluted, but might contain microorganisms,” Liu said. “You can dump in the device and it can kill the bacteria.”

    This small, nanostructured device uses a broad spectrum of sunlight to disinfect water faster than devices that use only ultraviolet rays.

  • Boko Haram releases purported video of Chibok girls

    {Video posted on social video reportedly shows some of the 300 girls who were kidnapped more than two years ago.}

    Boko Haram has released a video of the Nigerian schoolgirls allegedly kidnapped two years ago, showing some who are still alive and claiming others died in air strikes.

    The armed group, which has attacked both Muslims and Christians, seized 276 students from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014. Fifty-seven managed to escape in the immediate aftermath.

    “They should know that their children are still in our hands,” says a man whose face was covered by a turban in the video posted on YouTube on Sunday, the AFP News agency reported.

    Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Lagos, said the man in the video claimed to be the successor to Abubakar Shekau and called on the Nigerian government to release the groups’ fighters from prisons.

    Earlier this month, ISIL named Abu Musab al-Barnawi as Boko Haram’s new leader, replacing Shekau, who’s seven-year rule killed more than 20,000 people and drove more than 2.2 millon from their homes.

    “The speaker said military air strikes had killed many of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls, and he asked the parents of these girls to press the government to release the groups’ fighters from prisons across Nigeria,” Idris said.

    “The speaker also said that 40 of the schoolgirls were married, some were killed by airstrikes and there were several injuries.

    He also used the video opportunity to assure his comrades in prison and urged them to be resilient and assured them they would be soon be freed,” our correspondent added.

    The kidnapping of the girls has become a political issue in Nigeria, with the government and military criticised for their handling of the incident and failure to track down the girls.

    About 2,000 girls and boys have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2014, with many used as sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers, according to Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organisation.

    The group has been waging a campaign against the Nigerian government for several years, battling what it calls Western influence.

    In recent months, it has increasingly used suicide and bomb attacks as the Nigerian military pushes the group out of territories they once controlled.

    President Muhammadu Buhari has declared Boko Haram “technically” defeated, and said success in the campaign would be measured on the return of the Chibok girls and other abductees.

    Boko Haram seized 276 students from Chibok in 2014

  • Robot serves as art guide at Australian gallery

    {Curators of Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth aiming to attract more young visitors with hi-tech host.}

    Art lovers usually have to rely on headsets or humans to guide them around galleries. But visitors to the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth can now take a tour in the company of a little robot called Aggie.

    Like many galleries, it is dealing with a lack of money and falling visitor numbers. So, the curators are taking a less conventional route to attract more visitors.

    “We thought it would be really fun for family audiences to have something which was almost like a child-like guide, but a robot, who could excite them and also create new worlds around them,” Chris Taverns, from the Art Gallery of Western Australia, told Al Jazeera.

    Standing at 60cm tall, Aggie is programmed by Smartbots, a Perth-based company, but it relies on a human guide for voice commands.

    It makes sound effects to complement the paintings and plays both contemporay and traditional music during the tour.

    The gallery hopes Aggie’s size and interactive features will bring in younger audiences.

    “We’re constantly looking at new ways of having her engage with families, looking at new behaviours, new activities, for example with the children, in the art class,” said Smartbot’s Anitra Robertson.

  • Scientists convert carbon dioxide, create electricity

    {Scientists have developed an oxygen-assisted aluminum/carbon dioxide power cell that uses electrochemical reactions to both sequester the carbon dioxide and produce electricity.}

    While the human race will always leave its carbon footprint on the Earth, it must continue to find ways to lessen the impact of its fossil fuel consumption.

    “Carbon capture” technologies — chemically trapping carbon dioxide before it is released into the atmosphere — is one approach. In a recent study, Cornell University researchers disclose a novel method for capturing the greenhouse gas and converting it to a useful product — while producing electrical energy.

    Lynden Archer, the James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering, and doctoral student Wajdi Al Sadat have developed an oxygen-assisted aluminum/carbon dioxide power cell that uses electrochemical reactions to both sequester the carbon dioxide and produce electricity.

    Their paper, “The O2-assisted Al/CO2 electrochemical cell: A system for CO2 capture/conversion and electric power generation,” was published July 20 in Science Advances.

    The group’s proposed cell would use aluminum as the anode and mixed streams of carbon dioxide and oxygen as the active ingredients of the cathode. The electrochemical reactions between the anode and the cathode would sequester the carbon dioxide into carbon-rich compounds while also producing electricity and a valuable oxalate as a byproduct.

    In most current carbon-capture models, the carbon is captured in fluids or solids, which are then heated or depressurized to release the carbon dioxide. The concentrated gas must then be compressed and transported to industries able to reuse it, or sequestered underground. The findings in the study represent a possible paradigm shift, Archer said.

    “The fact that we’ve designed a carbon capture technology that also generates electricity is, in and of itself, important,” he said. “One of the roadblocks to adopting current carbon dioxide capture technology in electric power plants is that the regeneration of the fluids used for capturing carbon dioxide utilize as much as 25 percent of the energy output of the plant. This seriously limits commercial viability of such technology. Additionally, the captured carbon dioxide must be transported to sites where it can be sequestered or reused, which requires new infrastructure.”

    The group reported that their electrochemical cell generated 13 ampere hours per gram of porous carbon (as the cathode) at a discharge potential of around 1.4 volts. The energy produced by the cell is comparable to that produced by the highest energy-density battery systems.

    Another key aspect of their findings, Archer says, is in the generation of superoxide intermediates, which are formed when the dioxide is reduced at the cathode. The superoxide reacts with the normally inert carbon dioxide, forming a carbon-carbon oxalate that is widely used in many industries, including pharmaceutical, fiber and metal smelting.

    “A process able to convert carbon dioxide into a more reactive molecule such as an oxalate that contains two carbons opens up a cascade of reaction processes that can be used to synthesize a variety of products,” Archer said, noting that the configuration of the electrochemical cell will be dependent on the product one chooses to make from the oxalate.

    Al Sadat, who worked on onboard carbon capture vehicles at Saudi Aramco, said this technology in not limited to power-plant applications. “It fits really well with onboard capture in vehicles,” he said, “especially if you think of an internal combustion engine and an auxiliary system that relies on electrical power.”

    He said aluminum is the perfect anode for this cell, as it is plentiful, safer than other high-energy density metals and lower in cost than other potential materials (lithium, sodium) while having comparable energy density to lithium. He added that many aluminum plants are already incorporating some sort of power-generation facility into their operations, so this technology could assist in both power generation and reducing carbon emissions.

    A current drawback of this technology is that the electrolyte — the liquid connecting the anode to the cathode — is extremely sensitive to water. Ongoing work is addressing the performance of electrochemical systems and the use of electrolytes that are less water-sensitive.

    This graphic explains novel method for capturing the greenhouse gas and converting it to a useful product -- while producing electrical energy.

  • US food safety campaigners outraged over GMO label law

    {Campaigners say new law allows producers to obscure GMO content on food packaging.}

    Food safety organisations in the US have condemned a new law they say will allow food producers to obscure the labeling of genetically modified ingredients in their products, despite widespread health concerns over the effects of GMOs and the pesticides associated with them.

    Signed into law on Friday by President Barack Obama, the legislation permits manufacturers to inform consumers of GMO content through the use of Quick Response or QR codes, which require a device – such as a smartphone – to read.

    The law was passed despite opposition from environmental and food safety groups, as well as national polls which show that some 90 percent of Americans surveyed favoured clear labeling.

    Davin Hutchins, a senior campaigner for Greenpeace International’s Food For Life Campaign, said that many people, particularly low-income households and the elderly, don’t have the necessary technology or possess the know-how to easily read QR codes.

    That makes the “new law discriminatory in nature,” Hutchins told Al Jazeera.

    Hutchins also said there is a crucial lack of detail in the new law, which critics are calling the “DARK Act” – short for “Denying Americans the Right to Know”.

    “Unfortunately, the new law does not adequately use a broad definition of genetic modification; the law refers to foods that are “bioengineered”, which doesn’t include all forms of genetic modification,” he said.

    “Furthermore, the USDA [Department of Agriculture] will have the ultimate authority to decide what foods to include and which to exempt, even though the majority of corn, sugar beets, and soybeans are genetically modified varieties in the United States.”

    Katherine Paul, an associate director of the Organic Consumers Association – one of the country’s leading food safety organisations – told Al Jazeera that the new law violates consumer rights as all citizens have the right to know and choose what they are purchasing.

    Certainty for farmers

    Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered seeds and one of the main companies that supported the law, said that it believes the legislation provides sufficient information to consumers and “certainty for farmers”.

    “We recognize the importance of finding common ground and collaborating for the coexistence of all types of farming practices,” Monsanto’s CEO Hugh Grant said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.

    “As the planet gets warmer and drier, it’s critically important that farmers have access to all agricultural solutions to nourish our growing world and that consumers have choices and access to a healthy, balanced plate.

    “Monsanto believes this agreement provides certainty for farmers, consumers and anyone involved in how food is produced, marketed and sold.”

    Asked to comment on concerns the law violates consumer rights by not providing clear GMO labels, the Department of Agriculture said: “We are committed to providing multiple opportunities for engagement, and will have more information about this very soon.”

    For Paul and Hutchins, the main issue with GMO crops are the many “harmful” pesticides and herbicides used in their cultivation.

    Already around 80 percent of processed foods in the US contain GMOs.

    “The verdict on whether GMOs are harmful to human health is still out,” Hutchins said.

    “But there are other considerations: First, genetically modified monocultures like corn and soy are modified primarily to be paired with herbicides like Monsanto’s RoundUp. The active ingredient in RoundUp is glyphosate, which was classified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC),” Hutchins said.

    Paul said that more than 300 food and pesticide makers spent nearly $400m over the last four years in lobbying efforts to defeat the mandatory labeling of GMOs.

    “We failed not because of lack of support from consumers – but because of the enormous amounts of money thrown by the industry,” Paul said, adding that she was disappointed by Obama, who once vowed to enforce clear GMO labeling.

    “Our best hope to get it done through the system was Obama and he just let us down,” she said.

    “The next step is to increase education around GMO labeling … We have to boycott the companies that backed the legislation and support those that opposed it.”

    The Organic Consumers Association, which has long lobbied for clear GMO labeling, has created an app that lists companies it says people should avoid due to their support for the new legislation.

    The app, titled Buycott, also lists companies that were in favour of clear GMO labelling.

    Many believe GMOs and pesticides are harmful to people's health and the environment

  • Egyptian Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail passes away

    {Zewail, renowned worldwide for work on chemical reactions, died on Tuesday with no information on cause of death.}

    Egyptian Ahmed Zewail, who won the 1999 Nobel Prize for his work on the study of chemical reactions over immensely short time scales, has died at the age of 70.

    Zewail’s death on Tuesday was announced by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where he was Linus Pauling professor of chemistry and director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology.

    Zewail was born in Damanhur, Egypt. and lived in San Marino, a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. Caltech had no information on cause of death or where he died. Egyptian media reported that it was in the United States.

    Over nearly 40 years at Caltech, Zewail and his students pioneered the field of femtochemistry, the use of lasers to monitor chemical reactions at a scale of a femtosecond, or a millionth of a billionth of a second.

    Using Zewail’s techniques, scientists can observe the bonding and busting of molecules in real time. The research could lead to new ways of manipulating chemical or biological reactions as well as faster electronics and ultra-precise machinery.

    “If you can understand the landscape of a chemical change or a biological change, you might be able to alter the landscape,” Zewail said after winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

    Zewail helped develop four-dimensional electron microscopy, which can capture a real-time series of images of such fleeting processes that can be assembled into a sort of digital movie.

    “I never ever believed that one day I would get a call from Sweden as a boy,” he said after receiving the Nobel. “I had passion about science. My mother said I was going to burn the house (with chemistry experiments).”

    Prolific author

    Zewail authored about 600 scientific articles and 16 books and was showered with honors from around the world, including France’s highest honor, the Legion d’Honneur, and Egypt’s Order of the Grand Collar of the Nile.

    In 2009, US President Barack Obama named Zewail, a naturalized citizen, to the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and later that year made him the first US science envoy to the Middle East.

    He joined the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board in 2013.

    In 2014, Zewail wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times that urged the US to avoid cutting aid to Egypt after a military coup that ousted the elected president and replaced him.

    Zewail argued that constructive engagement and use of US “soft power” such as trade agreements were important in keeping Egypt as a partner in the war on terrorism and other US interests.

    In a statement, the CEO of the American Chemical Society, Thomas Connelly Jr, described Zuweil as “an exemplar scholar and statesman who will be greatly missed”.

    Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi expressed his condolences over the death, saying the country had lost a son and role model.

    Egyptian media reported that Zewail’s body would be flown to Egypt for burial. Zewail is survived by his wife, Dema Faham, and four children.

    Zewail is survived by his wife and four children

  • ‘Pokemon GO’ review: The cultural phenomenon is really fun to play

    {The Pokemon series, which made its debut on the Game Boy in the 90’s, is back in the spotlight thanks to the success of the new “Pokemon GO” game. In the series, gamers ‘capture’ creatures known as Pokemon and use them to battle against one another. There is also a storyline that involves defeating characters such as Team Rocket, who want to use Pokemon for power and greed. You also collect badges to master all of the gyms where creatures battle. Not much of a story, but great gameplay and a massive community brings it all together.}

    “Pokemon Go” is a smartphone app that mimics the gameplay of the Pokemon series. The user walks around and catches Pokemon in their vicinity. You can then train, battle or evolve your Pokemon to raise their power.

    Niantic, the company that designed the game, teamed up with Google Maps to help design the game mechanics for walking around in real time to play the game. The user is able to see their avatar walking around the world, as well as ‘PokeStops’, special locations where digital items such as potions, poke balls and eggs can be found. Players also search for ‘Gyms’ where Pokemon are trained and battles take place.

    In the game there are 3 different factions that a player can join. The purpose of these is to control major points around the world. So if the yellow team controls a specific point, red could gather up some friends and challenge them.

    “Pokemon Go” is a free-to-play game. However, if you don’t want to wait to collect certain items in the game, you can buy them via in-app purchases.

    While “Pokemon GO” is proving to be a cultural phenomenon, there are a lot of bugs and issues that come with the early stages of its release.The game, for example, can freeze or crash every now and then. Lag can be a major issue and if you live in a suburban area there will be a fewer “PokeStops” and that means less items.

    The app is very fun to play and can be quite addicting for people interested in the series. With the company already releasing patches and tweaks to help improve the gameplay, the game’s popularity could grow even more. “Pokemon GO” has already garnered a lot of attention, and I believe it’s only the beginning.

    Pokemon pandemonium: Fake monsters spark real safety fears

  • Facebook to add end-to-end encryption to Messenger app

    {Facebook’s “Messenger” app will be latest in string of apps provided with encrypted services.}

    Facebook has started to introduce a setting to its “Messenger” app that provides users with end-to-end encryption, meaning messages can only be read on the device to which they were sent.

    The encrypted feature is currently only available in a beta form to a small number of users for testing, but it will become available to all of its estimated 900-million users by late summer or in the fall, the social media giant said.

    The feature will be called “secret conversations”.

    “That means the messages are intended just for you and the other person – not anyone else, including us,” Facebook announced in a blog post.

    The feature will also allow users to set a timer, causing messages to expire after the allotted amount of time passes.

    Facebook is the latest to join an ongoing trend of encryption among apps.

    Back in April, Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook and has more than a billion users, strengthened encryption settings so that messages were only visible on the sending and recipient devices.

    Whatsapp had been providing limited encryption services since 2014.

    The company says it is now using a powerful form of encryption to protect the security of photos, videos, group chats and voice calls in addition to the text messages sent by more than a billion users around the globe.

    {{Controversy}}

    Encryption has become a hotly debated subject, with some US authorities warning that criminals and armed groups can use it to hide their tracks.

    “WhatsApp has always prioritised making your data and communication as secure as possible,” a blog post by WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton said, announcing the change at the time.

    Like Facebook has until now, Google and Yahoo use less extensive encryption to protect emails and messages while they are in transit, to prevent outsiders from eavesdropping.

    Apple uses end-to-end encryption for its iMessage service, but some experts say WhatsApp’s method may be more secure because it provides a security code that senders and recipients can use to verify a message came from someone they know – and not from a hacker posing as a friend.

    Facebook will be the latest to provide an option for encrypted messages

  • NASA’s Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter’s orbit

    {The $1.1 billion mission launched five years ago aims to probe the origin of the solar system before it aborts in 2018.}

    NASA’s Juno spacecraft has begun to orbit Jupiter to probe the origin of the solar system, the US space agency has said.

    The $1.1bn mission launched five years ago successfully entered the orbit of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, after a 35-minute manoeuvre, NASA said on Tuesday.

    “Success! Engine burn complete. Juno is now orbiting Jupiter, poised to unlock the planet’s secrets,” NASA said on its Twitter account.

    The unmanned solar-powered observatory has traveled 2.7 billion kilometres since it was launched five years ago from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

    Once in position to begin its 20-month science mission, Juno will fly in egg-shaped orbits, each one lasting 14 days, to peer through the planet’s thick clouds, map its gargantuan magnetic field and probe through the crushing atmosphere for evidence of a dense inner core.

    The probe also will hunt for water in Jupiter’s thick atmosphere, a key yardstick for figuring out how far away from the sun the gas giant formed.

    ‘Into the scariest place’

    Juno will come the closest of any previous spacecraft to the planet, grazing Jupiter’s highest clouds just 5,000km from the surface.

    With an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, Jupiter is known for its Great Red Spot, a storm bigger than Earth that has been raging for hundreds of years.

    Heidi Becker, senior engineer on radiation effects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, described the close approach as going “into the scariest part of the scariest place … part of Jupiter’s radiation environment where nobody has ever been”.

    A key concern are radiation levels – as high as 100 million X-rays in the course of a year, she explained.

    Juno may also encounter debris as it speeds through a belt of dust and meteorites surrounding Jupiter.

    “If it gets hit – even by a big piece of dust, even by a small piece of dust – it can do very serious damage,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

    Jupiter, the fifth planet from the sun, is believed to be the first planet to have formed in the solar system and likely captured many elements and gasses left over from the formation of the star that became Earth’s sun.

    Researchers hope the mission will provide a window back in time to study the formation of the solar system.

    The first mission designed to see beneath Jupiter’s clouds, Juno is named after the Roman goddess who was the wife of Jupiter, the god of the sky in ancient mythology.