Juno probe loses, for unknown reasons, most of images taken during 48th flyby around Jupiter

The Juno probe has lost, for unknown reasons, most of the images it took during its 48th flyby of Jupiter. As NASA informs, experts still do not know how and why it happened.

The problem was first noticed on December 14, 2022 when the device made its 47th flyby of Jupiter. After turning on the JunoCam and preparing it for work, the temperature of the camera unexpectedly exceeded the norm. The problem lasted 36 minutes, but during that time the scientists managed to get almost all the pictures taken by this camera.

During the 48th flyby of Jupiter on January 22, scientists again experienced abnormal overheating of the camera, but this time the problem lasted for up to 23 hours; and as a result, the first 214 images taken by the camera were lost.

Later, the camera temperature was adjusted, after which it took 44 more photos, including a very nice and detailed image of Jupiter's south pole from a distance of 124,735 km—with each pixel in the photo covering an area of 84 km.

Now experts are trying to find out the reasons for the problems with the camera.

On March 1, the device is planned to make its 49th flight around Jupiter, and experts hope that by then this problem with the camera will have been fixed.

Interestingly, the JunoCam camera is not considered a scientific device; it was installed on the probe to take beautiful pictures of Jupiter in order to popularize astronomy. But over time, scientists realized that the images taken by this camera could be useful to the scientific community studying Jupiter and its satellites.