Assembly began April 1, 2010, for NASA's Juno spacecraft in the high-bay cleanroom at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colo. Workers are moving the radiation vault above a mock-up of the upper part of the spacecraft's main body. The radiation vault protects the spacecraft's sensitive electronics from Jupiter's intense radiation belts.
Juno's principal investigator is Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, Colo., is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency, Rome, is contributing an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.
For more information about Juno, visit http://www.nasa.gov/juno.