Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since the summer of 2016, but the spacecraft appears to be dealing with recurring problems. Earlier there was indeed a problem with heats and this has been the case again recently, resulting in the loss of 214 images.

NASA writes It is trying on the basis of engineering data to find out why most of the images captured with JunoCam are invalid. The camera is still on at the moment and is currently working nominally. The problem occurred on January 22, during the orbit of Jupiter 48. The glitch lasted for at least 23 hours, leaving 214 unusable images.

Once the anomaly that caused the overheating disappeared, the camera worked properly again; The remaining 44 planned images are of good quality and usable. This problem has also happened before, during the 47th orbit that occurred in December last year. Then the problem lasted for a much shorter period: 36 minutes instead of 23 hours. As a result, of the then planned 90 images, only the first four copies were unusable.

Originally, the camera was mainly for PR purposes, but now the camera with a sensor resolution of 2 megapixels is important for science as well. JunoCam is a color camera designed for wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum and is used, among other things, to take pictures of Jupiter’s clouds, as well as images of the gas giant’s main moons.

Juno spacecraft It was launched in 2011 And He reached Jupiter in 2016. Since then, the probe has been orbiting the planet. The 49th orbit of Jupiter takes place on March 1st. It’s really remarkable that the camera has lasted so long, as JunoCam is designed to last at least seven orbits around the planet. There is radiation from high-energy particles around Jupiter because the solar wind collides with the planet’s magnetic field and the camera was not expected to last long as a result.