On December 14, Juno passed the periovium of its orbit for the 47th time.
After completing the flyby, Juno started transmitting the collected data to Earth and encountered a glitch. The problem was the inability to access the onboard memory. According to the researchers, it was caused by the impact of the most powerful radiation belts of Jupiter.
In order to protect against radiation, all Juno electronics are enclosed in a special 181-kilogram titanium storage. But some of the radiation still manages to break through the protection, which can lead to various negative effects.
To solve the problem, the mission controllers switched the device to safe mode and restarted its computer. According to JPL’s statement, this helped restore memory access.
