NASA's JunoCam suffers glitch on Jupiter flyby 

On January 22 the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft did not acquire all the planned images during the orbiter’s most recent flyby of Jupiter. (NASA)

Data received from the spacecraft indicates that the camera experienced an issue similar to one that occurred on its previous close pass of the gas giant last month. (NASA)

The team realised there was an issue when it saw the temperature rise after the camera was powered on in preparation for the flyby. (NASA)

 On this occasion the issue persisted for a longer period- 23 hours compared to 36 minutes during the December close pass. (NASA)

This has left the first 214 JunoCam images planned for the flyby unusable. (NASA)

As with the previous occurrence, once the anomaly that caused the temperature to jump was cleared, the camera returned to normal operation and the remaining 44 images were of good quality and usable. (NASA)

The mission team is evaluating JunoCam engineering data and is investigating the root cause of the anomaly and mitigation strategies. (NASA)

JunoCam will remain powered on for the time being and the camera continues to operate in its nominal state. (NASA)

JunoCam is a color, visible-light camera designed to capture pictures of Jupiter’s cloud tops. (NASA)

The camera was originally designed to operate in Jupiter’s high-energy particle environment for at least seven orbits but has survived far longer. (NASA)