Bicester/Aylesbury: Moog UK Westcott provides engine for Jupiter mission
Moog UK Westcott, the rocket-propulsion research, development, test and manufacturing company based at the 650-acre Westcott Venture Park, located between Bicester and Aylesbury, has designed and built the LEROS 1b main engine powering the mission to Jupiter.
The mission will climax on July 4 when, if all goes according to plan, the Juno spacecraft will go into orbit around the planet. This would be a very fitting way for the company, which became the government Guided Projectile Establishment in 1946, to celebrate 70 years as home of rocket propulsion research in the UK.
The LEROS engine is known for its high thrust, robust performance and reliability. It burns the combination of hydrazine and MON-3 that is often used on interplanetary missions.
Moog also provided the solenoid control valves for the LEROS 1b thruster, the solenoid control valves for the 12 1 lbf monopropellant thrusters. the propellant feed system valves, and the electronics for the on-board motion-control devices.
Provided it passes the trial of orbit insertion. Juno will plunge into uncharted territory, journeying closer to the gas giant than any spacecraft before. and seeing Jupiter for what it really is.
The spacecraft was initially carried aloft by an Atlas-V launch vehicle back in August 2011. The probe’s trajectory has since then been controlled solely through its own internal propulsion system.
Since the launch, the LEROS engine has been fired a number of times including two 30-minute burns in 2012. During these manoeuvers, the spacecraft was 298 million miles from Earth and radio signals took nearly an hour for a round trip; but the burns set Juno up for a swing by the Earth thirteen months later, skimming past at an altitude of merely 348 miles at 16,330mph. In so doing it became the fastest man-made object in history - at this speed, Juno would travel from London to New York in 12 minutes. This extreme velocity put Juno on an arcing trajectory out to Jupiter.
When Juno approaches Jupiter on July 4, its main computer will command the LEROS 1b’s fuel valves to open, and this will allow the ignition to establish the combustion process. The engine will burn for approximately 35 minutes, firing against the direction of travel. The braking effect will allow the massive gravity of Jupiter to capture the probe and put it into Jovian orbit. This is a critical manoeuver and will be the most significant burn of the LEROS 1b which has to operate as planned in order to ensure that the correct orbit is achieved. If this does not happen, the mission will be lost.
An additional 22 minute LEROS 1b burn is planned to trim the orbit. At this point the main scientific experiments should begin their task of uncover the internal deep-structure of the planet, including details of its water content and magnetic field. The information obtained should help planetary scientists to unlock the origins of Jupiter.
An engine of the same design has been to Mars on board Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey and to Mercury on board the Messenger spacecraft. Its popularity for interplanetary missions is due to its compact size, relatively high thrust at 635N and high specific impulse at 318s.
