The Juno mission to Jupiter — A pre-launch update

Juno, the second mission within the New Frontiers Program, is a Jupiter polar orbiter mission that will return high-priority science data relevant to multiple divisions within NASA's Science Mission Directorate.¹²Juno is currently in system integration/test in Denver and ships to Astrotech in Titusville, Florida in April 2011 to conduct final checkout in preparation for integration with the launch vehicle and subsequent launch in August 2011. This paper builds upon the Juno mission overview paper published after the Project PDR (2009 IEEE Aerospace Conference - paper #1582 that provided an comprehensive description of Juno's science objectives, and the instrument payload, spacecraft design including solar arrays, radiation vault, stellar reference unit, and the mission/operations design following arrival at Jupiter) and reviews Juno's current project status, provides a description of the Juno mission through Jupiter arrival, summarizes mission and spacecraft design changes that have occurred since the Juno Project level PDR and discusses some of the technical and management challenges that the Juno team has encountered in keeping Juno successfully on track for launch in August.