NASA's Juno Spaceship to Jupiter Will Make the Most Distant Use of Solar Power Ever

Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
NASA is prepared to launch a mission to Jupiter this week that will probe deep into the planet’s clouds to reveal what it is made of. The Juno spacecraft will also make history by being the most distant space probe to use solar panels as its primary source of electricity. The decision charts a new course for deep space missions that traditionally used a radioactive battery, and it stands to prove the viability of solar technology even when the sun is 5 times further away than it is from our home planet.(...)[June has] high-tech gallium arsinide solar cells rather than a traditional radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses decaying Plutonium 238 to create electricity. Three wings of solar panels sprout from the craft, covering 60 square meters. They will produce 15 kW of power at 1 AU (Astronomic Unit) – the measurement of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The probe will take 5 years to get to the gas giant, which is 5 AUs from the Sun. At this distance, the solar cells will leave the spacecraft with 420 watts of electricity to run on.