Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
The design is based on the same design that currently powers the InSight Mars lander, only much larger. The solar panels will provide about 500 watts of power while the spacecraft is flying past the Trojan asteroids, Katie Oakman, Lucy structures and mechanisms lead at Lockheed Martin Space, which built the spacecraft, said during a news conference held on Thursday (Oct. 14).
While Juno’s panels are highly efficient and extremely reliable, they are not cutting edge technology. This is because Jupiter is what we scientists call ‘a very long way away’ and so it took just under 5 years for the probe to get there. In addition, it takes a long time to design and build a probe and NASA, quite sensibly, values proven reliable technology over stuff that is fancy and new. So really, this was cutting edge technology back in 2005. We can do even better now.
Next decade space probes could be launched with solar panels that provide twice as much energy per kilogram as Juno’s and this may be sufficient to send solar powered probes all the way to Saturn where sunlight is only 1.1% as strong as in earth orbit. But that is in the future. For now we’ll just have to wait and see what NASA and other space programs can achieve.
) past Earth to get a gravity boost on its journey out to the Trojan asteroids. Some people could actually see it with binocs (good ones) as it approached. 
On October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 890,000 miles (1.4 million km). The image was taken as part of an instrument calibration sequence as the spacecraft approached Earth for its first of three Earth gravity assists.
