NASA Reveals How It Fixed A Camera 370-Million-Miles Away In Deep Space

Read more: Visit website

According to the agency, NASA engineers used an experimental technique called annealing, in which the camera was heated at 25 degrees C to repair the microscopic defects.

The annealing process successfully restored JunoCam, allowing it to capture high-quality images of Jupiter's moon, including its north polar region with sulfur dioxide frosts and volcanic activity.

NASA said that the results from the "long-distance save" were presented during a technical session on July 16 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nuclear ⁘ Space Radiation Effects Conference in Nashville.

"We knew annealing can sometimes alter a material like silicon at a microscopic level, but didn't know if this would fix the damage," JunoCam imaging engineer Jacob Schaffner of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego said as quoted by NASA .

"We commanded JunoCam's one heater to raise the camera's temperature to 77 degrees Fahrenheit - much warmer than typical for JunoCam - and waited with bated breath to see the results."

Understanding the issue and repairing the camera from 370 million miles away was challenging, as the team relied on remote commands.

They also waited for results.

"After orbit 55, our images were full of streaks and noise," JunoCam instrument lead Michael Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems said as quoted by NASA. "We tried different schemes for processing the images to improve the quality, but nothing worked. With the close encounter of Io bearing down on us in a few weeks, it was Hail Mary time: The only thing left we hadn't tried was to crank JunoCam's heater all the way up and see if more extreme annealing would save us."

NASA plans to apply this technique to other instruments and subsystems on the Juno spacecraft, and it may benefit satellites in Earth's orbit and future space missions.