NASA's Juno spacecraft undergoing pre-launch environmental test

LOS ANGELES. March 8. KAZINFORM NASA's Juno spacecraft is currently undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver, Colorado, before its mission to Jupiter later this year, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced on Monday. Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

The two-week-long test will simulate many of the flight activities the spacecraft will execute during the mission, said JPL in Pasadena, Los Angeles.

Sealed in a large thermal vacuum chamber, Juno is being exposed to the extreme cold and vacuum conditions it will experience on its voyage to Jupiter, JPL said.

The launch window for Juno from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida opens on Aug. 5, 2011.

The solar-powered Juno spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles 33 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, according to JPL.

The spacecraft is fully assembled and all instruments have been integrated, with all three solar array wings installed and stowed, and the spacecraft's large high-gain antenna put in place on the top of the avionics vault, JPL said.

After the test, Juno will be shipped from Lockheed Martin's facility to Kennedy Space Center in early April, where it will undergo final preparations and launch, said JPL.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute at San Antonio, Texas, while Lockheed Martin Space Systems is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency in Rome is contributing an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment. Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.xinhuanet.com