Juno Mission Simulation

Abstract

The Juno spacecraft is planned to launch in August of 2012 and would arrive at Jupiter four years later. The spacecraft would spend more than one year orbiting the planet and investigating the existence of an ice-rock core; determining the amount of global water and ammonia present in the atmosphere, studying convection and deep- wind profiles in the atmosphere; investigating the origin of the Jovian magnetic field, and exploring the polar magnetosphere. Juno mission management is responsible for mission and navigation design, mission operation planning, and ground-data-system development. In order to ensure successful mission management from initial checkout to final de-orbit, it is critical to share a common vision of the entire mission operation phases with the rest of the project teams. Two major challenges are 1) how to develop a shared vision that can be appreciated by all of the project teams of diverse disciplines and expertise, and 2) how to continuously evolve a shared vision as the project lifecycle progresses from formulation phase to operation phase. The Juno mission simulation team addresses these challenges by developing agile and progressive mission models, operation simulations, and real-time visualization products. This paper presents mission simulation visualization network (MSVN) technology that has enabled a comprehensive mission simulation suite (MSVN-Juno) for the Juno project.