Juno's Hail Mary: Remotely Fixing a Camera 370 Million Miles Away

NASA's Juno spacecraft, orbiting Jupiter, faced a critical challenge: its JunoCam imager suffered severe radiation damage. Hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, the team implemented a 'Hail Mary' fix using a technique called annealing—heating the camera to reduce material defects. This long-distance repair, detailed at the IEEE Nuclear & Space Radiation Effects Conference, miraculously restored the camera just in time for a close flyby of Io, capturing stunning images of the volcanic moon's north polar region. This success provides invaluable lessons for future radiation-hardened spacecraft design.