Bryce Strauss graduated from the Cockrell School of Engineering with his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in May 2015. Now, only a year later, Strauss will be on console at mission control as a mission operations systems engineer for the critical moment when NASA’s Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016.
The Juno mission began in 2011 and will be the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after Galileo from 1995 to 2003. Juno will gather information about the planet’s atmosphere, magnetic fields and gravity fields to discover more about Jupiter’s structure — and possibly revealing whether it has a rocky core.
Strauss isn’t the only Texas Engineer leading the way on Mission Juno; Michael Watkins (B.S. ASE 1983, M.S. ASE 1985, Ph.D. ASE 1990) is the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Richard Cook (M.S. ASE 1989) serves as the JPL’s Deputy Director for Solar System Exploration.
We caught a few minutes with Strauss to hear more about tonight’s phase and the role he will play to help ensure the mission’s success. NASA-TV will stream the orbit insertion phase live from 9:30 to 11 p.m. Central Time.
Tell us about the orbit insertion phase and why it’s so critical to the Juno mission.
Juno’s Jupiter Orbit Insertion (JOI) phase is a make-or-break ignition of Juno’s main engine. The spacecraft launched in 2011, and this maneuver will slow it down enough to be captured into a 53-day orbit around Jupiter.
Without the JOI phase, Juno would be traveling too fast and fly by Jupiter. If Juno doesn’t get into Jupiter’s orbit tonight, that’s the end of it — there will be no science mission. However, we have a robust spacecraft command sequence on board to ensure minimal burn interruptions. If an interruption occurs, the autonomous sequence will quickly reboot the spacecraft and continue with a successful JOI burn.
How long does the process take?
The automatic orbit insertion sequence has already been running since Thursday, June 30, and the nominal burn tonight will take 35 minutes. We will be monitoring spacecraft telemetry up until the moment Juno re-orients itself from its flight position to its burn position. At this point we’ll translate “tones” transmitted from Juno to ensure everything is occurring as planned. Because the sequence is fully autonomous, this phase is a matter of trusting the team’s many years of work and watching it execute successfully.
What role will you play at this phase of the mission?
As a mission operations systems engineer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, I work as part of the team focused on spacecraft health and safety. My role is to coordinate spacecraft activities with the Juno team and build/uplink the necessary commanding to achieve mission success.
Tonight, I will be monitoring the spacecraft at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colo. Nominal Juno operations and commanding actually occur from Denver rather than from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). We have a mission control area for five current missions (MRO, Odyssey, Maven, Spitzer and Juno) on our campus, and I will be located at the Juno Systems Engineering console. We will have a full suite of specialized engineers monitoring their respective subsystems here in Denver. In addition, an equivalent team will be monitoring the spacecraft at JPL to have full redundancy during the critical event.
What is it like to be here in your career already?
I am extremely fortunate to have landed on such a neat program after graduating in May 2015. I did two summer internships with Lockheed Martin throughout my time at UT Austin. Upon graduation I transitioned to mission operations and started working on Juno.
How are you feeling about tonight’s event?
Our whole Juno team is extremely excited for tonight. We have a countdown clock on the wall of our mission support area and have been watching the days tick down for quite some time. It’s finally go-time — go Juno!
