back to article NASA Juno probe HOWLS past Earth - and goes into HIBERNATION

NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft waved goodbye to Earth as it shot past at 140,000kph - and mysteriously switched into "safe mode", the space agency confirmed to The Register. The $1.1bn probe buzzed our planet to gain a speed boost for its five-year journey to the gas giant. A spokesman for the space agency's Jet …

COMMENTS

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  1. Kharkov
    Pint

    A beer to send it on its way...

    And a warning, it's gaining speed from us so we're losing speed and so dooming ourselves to spiral into the sun, oh noes!

    Can someone get off the Earth & give it a bit of a push so we get our speed back?

    NOTE: It was a coin tossup between beer & troll - the beer won...

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      Joke

      If we didn't have all these space missions using the Earth to sling-shot themselves into the solar system and stealing our rotational speed, we wouldn't need these pesky leap seconds that seem to be causing so much grief recently.

      Why, oh, why, won't someone think of the little 'uns?

    2. d3rrial

      Actually our decreased rotational speed would send us out to a further orbit, strangely enough.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Which is why such a flyby increases the rotational speed ... of the Earth around the Sun (i.e. the Earth drops to a lower orbit and goes faster; if you extract energy from gravitational systems, THEY HEAT UP!)

      2. JeffyPoooh

        decreased rotational speed would send us out to a further orbit

        And if the Earth's orbital velocity "ground to a complete stop", the planet would defy the Sun's gravity and fly off into space.

        :-)

        1. Steve the Cynic

          re: rotational speeds

          ((Pedantry))

          You lot are, of course, all wrong about the probe's effect on our *rotational* speed. The Earth does NOT rotate around the Sun. It rotates around its *axis*, and *revolves* around the Sun.

          So the probe's passage has an unmeasurably small effect of marginal calculability on the Earth's rotation because it tidally steals a small amount of slowness. It also has an effect of similar size on the Earth's orbital speed, slowing it by conservation of (linear) momentum. This causes the Earth to drop into an orbit that's ever so slightly lower. Atoms are bigger than the difference, though.

          I think you could say that it affects the Earth's, um, er, revolutionary speed. Make of that what you will.

          ((/Pedantry))

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Can someone get off the Earth & give it a bit of a push so we get our speed back?

      's OK, I farted counterclockwise (when viewed from the North Pole).

      Twice.

  2. Mike Manes

    "HI" is Morse Code laugh

    Contrary to your post, the "HI" that hams are gonna send is the CW equivalent to an IM "LOL". And it's supposed to be sent at an agonizingly slow rate - equivalent to 1/30 Baud, where one "dit" symbol lasts 30 seconds!

    73 (that's CW for "best regards) de ("from") Mike W5VSI (my ham station call sign).

    1. Gav

      Re: "HI" is Morse Code laugh

      Mike W5VSI. Your last message was garbled. Please repeat.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "HI" is Morse Code laugh

      Diddley dah-di-dah...pip pip!

      1. Danny 14

        Re: "HI" is Morse Code laugh

        my brain was forced to access its dusty recesses.

        da di da dit da da di dah

  3. Mike Manes

    "HI" is Morse Code laugh

    Contrary to your post's suggestion that "HI" is a greeting, it's actually a ham CW (Morse Code) abbreviation for a laugh, or the IM equivalent of "LOL". And it's supposed to be sent at an agonizingly slow speed of 1/30 Baud.

    Not sure how to translate that to words per minute but suspect it's more like words per hour.

    73 (CW for "best regards") de ("from") W5VSI (my ham callsign)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ham radio

    Pigs have the wireless?

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Ham radio

      Why, of course. How do you think they communicate with the pigs in spaaaaacccceee?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Ham radio

        I have the feeling that there will a loud protest by offended islamists later in the day.

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          Re: Ham radio

          I have a feeling there will be a loud protest by busybodies who think some Islamists, somewhere, might be offended.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A good idea

    This thing's heading off into the outer reaches of the solar system and they think arranging a DDoS attack is a wise idea?

    Who's the rocket scientist who thought that one up...

  6. saif

    Set your alarm clocks for....

    August 9 (2014)...talk about advanced warning...that due date is a gestation period away...

  7. Joshua Murray

    October 9th, not August 9th!

    It's tonight, not next year! Please amend the article.

    Cheers

    Josh

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: October 9th, not August 9th!

      For a second I thought this was the beloved "Reg Delay" [tm], but Space Weather indeed lists the event for October 9.

      1. Matt 21

        Re: October 9th, not August 9th!

        "Juno, launched in August 2011, will be passing 560 km above Earth's surface at 3.21pm Eastern Daylight Time in America on August 9 (7.21 pm GMT, and 4.51 am on Australia's east coast on August 10)."

        Is this an example of confusion causes by the Yanks inability to write dates the right way round?

        1. Jan 0 Silver badge
          Trollface

          US dates

          Does anybody else use middle-endian numbers for anything?

          In mitigation it's good to know that the US military uses little endian dates. It's not often that you can see some sanity in military decisions, even though they should of course be using big-endian dates!

          Posted 20131010012341

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'ALLO DELTA X-RAY 'ALLO DELTA X-RAY CQ THE DELTA X-RAY EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO CQ CQ CQ CQ CQ 'ALLO DELTA X-RAY 'ALLO DELTA X-RAY CQ THE DELTA X-RAY EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO EASY ABLE THREE JAPAN ECHO CQ CQ CQ CQ CQ 'ALLO DELTA X-RAY 'ALLO DELTA X-RAY

    1. Refugee from Windows

      You've forgotten to add the 200mS pause between the Auto CQ repeating, thus ensuring your call is never actually answered. It's just used to hold your frequency whilst you have a personal needs break, meal or seemingly a nap?

      If you spend that amount of time sending HI then you've no chance to send your callsign.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Someone will be along to tell us that sending this message without a callsign violates licence conditions in many places <g>

        1. Klystron525

          Fortunately with the deliberate shutdown of the FCC by the DemocRATS, including unattended automated databases, you are now free to forget about that pesky ID requirement with impunity. If a station fails to identify, and there is no bureaucrat to hear it, is it really a violation?

        2. SusanY

          They thought of that -- the procedure was to send your call sign at normal CW speed during the first "dit" of the slow-speed "HI" message. So Juno would have heard the first "dit" as being quieter than the rest of the "HI" message, because it consisted of lots of people sending their call sign (hence transmitting about 50% of the time) rather than lots of people sending a continuous carrier.

          (If you wanted to get fancy, you could have sent your call sign using frequency shift keying during the first "dit" period --- so this would be heard as a full-volume slow "dit" by Juno's wide-band reciever, and as a normal speed CW call-sign by someone else (e.g. Ofcom) listening with a narrow filter).

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Target Practice

    I for one welcome our Jovian Overlords...but will nevertheless be keeping my morse key silent during the time when Juno could target its Plasma Blaster at me. Call me suspicious, but this sounds like a chilling conspiracy to rid the world of us Hams !

    DE G4JMO

    posted anonymously for extra precaution ;)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Target Practice

      Posted "anonymously" with your callsign in plain text. Don't worry, I'm sure the Ofcom DB isn't searchable online.

      I however, shall be asleep at that time of the morning. My antenna is rubbish on 10m anyway.

      — VK4MSL

    2. AndrueC Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Target Practice

      Call me suspicious

      Hello, suspicious.

  10. Jonathan Richards 1
    Joke

    Ground track

    Sheesh, Juno is going to make a screeching handbrake turn somewhere above northern Chile!

    I'm trying to visualize this in glorious 3-D, complete with Juno's (presumably hyperbolic) trajectory, Earth's orbital motion and rotation, and I'm totally failing! (That bit isn't the joke that the icon refers to, BTW)

  11. willi0000000
    Pint

    i'm just glad NASA had a few spare bucks to keep enough lights on for things like this and watching the ISS.

    of course if anything major should go wrong at the ISS, and the Russians can't get everybody out safely, i'm sure that the US congress will immediately get it's poop in a group and fund whatever is needed. in about two years!

    who am i kidding? they'd yell something like SPACEGHAZI!!!!! and blame someone else.

    beer because i'm going to drink myself into oblivion thinking about all the R&D trashed by this unnecessary shutdown.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      What shutdown is this you are talking about, Monsieur

      The Pentagon Spent USD 63 x 10⁹ Before the Government Shutdown

  12. Pete 2 Silver badge

    That's why there are no aliens

    It's the incessant babble of our radio (and TV, for those people who don't realise that, technically speaking, they are the same) transmissions which sends any spacecraft that is unlucky enough to be exposed to them into a safe mode. Where "safe" would mean putting as many light-years as possible between itself and the source.

    Maybe the good book doesn't say Mostly harmless. Could the entry really read: Stay away, for your own sanity.

  13. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Trollface

    Safe Mode?

    It noticed it is GUMMINT SHUTDOWN TIME!

    "Yepee. I can sleep in."

  14. Jon Green
    Boffin

    Move along, nothing to see here!

    Going into safe mode is nothing unsual for spacecraft. In a harsh radiation environment, they're subject to frequent "single event upsets" (SEUs). Well-written flight software detects these, and either repairs the damaged data if possible (by "voting" between redundant copies), power-cycles the affected system if not, or - in more substantial cases - having the safety processor drop the whole system into safe mode, from which the subsystems can be brought up, one by one.

    As I think I predicted in an earlier posting here, the Sun's rather weedy "solar maximum" in this 11-year cycle has turned into a double-peak, with a lot of activity in the past few days. Click on this link to see an animation of the GOES X-ray images for the past 24 hours. It's quite impressive at the moment.

    I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Juno hit the edge of a small solar storm and was briefly incapacitated. I'd be astonished if it was due to the efforts of the radio hams saying "Hi!", though!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Move along, nothing to see here!

      Your spec might say that, but mine says a maximum of 1 safe mode event for a 15 year mission. My majority voting is to help ensure that, and also has to include a SEE in 1 channel and a failure in another channel at the same time. Worst case, some of my circuits expect a SEE every 24 hours. I haven't even started on the new Jovian mission yet.

      Saying that, it's easy compared to sticking to the compliance of a certain countries export regulations who suddenly decide that a comparitor designed in 1972 is now a munition and cannot be moved from one building to another without authority, even though it was designed in and manufactured years ago :(

      1. Jon Green

        Re: Move along, nothing to see here!

        @AC - I work in satellites. As I'm posting under my own name, I can't discuss details like specced SEU or safe mode event frequencies, except to say that we certainly do a lot of defensive coding to prevent disruption, and to recover from more serious events without more than minimum downtime.

    2. Jonathan Richards 1
      Joke

      Re: Move along, nothing to see here!

      OK, own up, who sent HI'); DROP TABLE waypoints;-- ?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Move along, nothing to see here!

        You sure they aren't using MongoDB?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Headmaster

        Re: Move along, nothing to see here!

        OK, own up, who sent HI'); DROP TABLE waypoints;-- ?

        No one, morse doesn't have lowercase letters. :-P

  15. Stevie

    Bah!

    Well *I* shall not be adding any more inane morse chatter to the aether (W8YFL) partly because I never got my G4 certification, partly because I let my G8 license lapse thirty summod years ago, but mostly because I don't have a shed with a shortwave radio in it.

  16. Sebastian A
    Coat

    Safe mode aye?

    Reboot it and press F8, then pick "Start Windows Normally", that usually works for me. Can someone zip out to the console real quick? We have no ILO to it.

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