Scientist plays vital role in mission to Jupiter
Dr Fletcher has been part of NASA’s Juno project
A SCIENTIST from Hinckley is to be one of the first in the world to observe stunning new photographs of Jupiter taken by the spacecraft orbiting the mysterious gas giant.
NASA’s Juno space probe successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit on the perilous final stage of its five-year, 1.4 billion-mile journey last Tuesday.
The solar spacecraft, which is the closest any probe has ever been to the planet, will send scientists on Earth a treasure trove of data about Jupiter’s composition, gravity, magnetic field and the source of its raging 384mph winds.
A panoramic camera will also return breathtaking colour photographs, which scientists like Dr Leigh Fletcher, from Hinckley, can combine with information from ground-based telescopes to unlock the planet’s secrets.
He is part of a 10-strong team from the University of Leicester who is playing a crucial role in the mission.
Dr Fletcher, from the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: “What Juno is really trying to do is get down really deep, deeper than we’ve ever been able to look before.
“From the ground we can look at the high level stuff and combine it with the deeper data from Juno to produce a 3D picture of the atmosphere.”
The former student at Holliers Walk, Mount Grace and John Cleveland College will be using Earth-based telescopes to study how longterm weather changes the appearance of the planet.
The 34-year-old left Hinck- ley in the1990s to study a masters degree in natural sciences, specialising in physics, at the University of Cambridge.
He made the switch to the University of Oxford to complete his PHD in 2004 by studying data from the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft orbiting Saturn.
He soon made a name for himself and scooped a job worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
In 2010, he returned to Oxford and won a prestigious fellowship from the Royal Society to fund his research.
Since then he has been involved in a series a space missions and now works as a lecturer at the University of Leicester in planetary sciences.
He lives in Narborough with his wife and two children.
On Tuesday, Juno reached Jupiter at just before 5am following a 35-minute engine burn which reduced its speed by 1,212mph to send it into orbit.
The success was met with cheers and applause from NASA’s mission control room in California.
At the end of its 20-month mission, Juno will be sent on a one-way plunge into the planet’s thick atmosphere.
For more information on Dr Fletcher’s research follow @LeighFletcher on Twitter or visit his blog planetaryweather.blogspot.co.uk