Latest Scott Bolton Stories

In England it is known as the "Plough," in Germany the "Great Cart," and in Malaysia the "Seven Ploughs." Since humanity first turned its eyes skyward, the seven northern hemisphere stars that compose the "Big Dipper" have been a welcome and familiar introduction to the heavens. "I can recall as a kid making an imaginary line from the two stars that make up the right side of the Big Dipper's bowl and extending it upward to find the North Star," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of...

NASA, looking forward to launching a Jupiter-bound mission next week, sent the Juno spacecraft to its final destination at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as the agency makes final preparations for the launch. The solar-powered spacecraft was secured in place atop the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 55 rocket at 10:42 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. The "most powerful Atlas rocket ever made" is sitting on the launch pad at the base while technicians carry out "a final flurry of checks...

NASA's Juno spacecraft will be forging ahead into a treacherous environment at Jupiter with more radiation than any other place NASA has ever sent a spacecraft, except the sun. In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. New pictures of the assembly were released today."Juno is basically an armored tank going to Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal...

Assembly has begun on NASA's Juno spacecraft, which will help scientists understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. The mission, whose principal investigator is Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Tex., is expected to launch in August 2011 and reach Jupiter in 2016.The assembly, testing and launch operations phase began April 1 in a high-bay clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver. Engineers and technicians will spend the next few months fitting...

The U.S. space program said it is undertaking an in-depth exploration to Jupiter. The Juno mission will be the first project in which a spacecraft is in a polar orbit around the solar system's largest planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure, NASA officials said. Jupiter is the archetype of giant planets in our solar system and formed very early, capturing most of the material left after the sun formed, said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest...