One of the biggest challenge in flying a satellite is countering gravity pull to the spacecraft. This all-or-nothing job will be performed by its Leros-1b engine built by Moog-ISP in Westcott, Bucking Hamshire.
The Leros-1b was chosen to be the main engine on the Nasa satellite by its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.
Ground controllers pressurized the Juno spacecraft's propulsion system Tuesday to prepare for a July 4 rocket firing by the probe's UK-made rocket engine that will steer spinning, solar-powered robot into orbit around Jupiter.
Around 20 months observing Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetic field, Juno is poised to become the second spacecraft to ever orbit the solar system's king planet, and the first since NASA's Galileo orbiter ended its mission in 2003.
Juno's Leros 1b main engine, designed and built by Moog-ISP in Westcott, Buckinghamsphire, is getting up for a make-or-break 35 minute firing to steer the spacecraft into a wide multi-million mile ellipse around Jupiter.
"In fact, things went so well that Lockheed Martin said initially they thought they had confused the real flight data on the engine burn with the simulation data. It was that accurate. So that's obviously really encouraging," Dr Coxhill told BBC news.
Engineers calculated the engine must fire at least 20 minutes or so for Juno to be captured into any orbit around Jupiter, and 35 minutes to reach the targeted trajectory, according to Rick Nybakken, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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