In detail
JANUS was selected on February 2013 and its Principal Investigator (PI) is Dr. Pasquale Palumbo, research manager at INAF-IAPS, formerly associate professor at the University of Naples “Parthenope”. The Italian Space Agency is the lead funding Agency with involvement of the German Space Agency (DLR), Spanish Research Ministry, and the UK Space Agency. The DLR-Planetary Research Institute (Berlin) is the main technical and scientific partner, also contributing to the ground segment.
JANUS has several science objectives:
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Characterize the Jupiter icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa as planetary bodies and investigate their potential habitability conditions;
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Provide understanding on surface and underground composition and processes of Jupiter moons;
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Characterize and study the physical properties of other satellites of the Jupiter system, including Io, the irregular and inner satellites;
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Perform a physical characterization of the Jovian ring system;
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Study the external layers (till the troposphere) of Jupiter atmosphere;
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Study the magnetosphere in which Jupiter and its satellites are embedded, and the complex interactions taking place in the system.
Properties
JANUS is a narrow angle camera with the following characteristics:
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Aperture: 116 mm
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Focal length: 467 mm
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Field of view: 1.29° x 1.72°
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Detector: Teledyne-e2v CMOS (1504 x 2000 pixel)
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Resolution: 7.5 m/pix at 500 km
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Filters: 13 filters covering the wavelength range 340 – 1080 nm.
Team
The JANUS team counts 53 Co-Investigators from Italy, Germany, Spain, UK, France, Japan, USA, Israel, of which 15 are Italian, 11 in INAF (6 in IAPS: Pasquale Palumbo, Davide Grassi, Federico Tosi, Cecilia Tubiana, Michele Zusi; 1 in OACN: Vincenzo Della Corte; 2 in OAPD: Gabriele Cremonese, Alice Lucchetti; 1 in OAR: Elena Mazzotta Epifani; 1 in OAT: Gaetano Di Achille).
Moreover, it counts 46 Associated Scientists from the same countries, of which 27 are Italian, 19 in INAF, 4 in IAPS (Livio Agostini, Valentina Galluzzi, Lorenza Giacomini, Romolo Politi).
The Italian team managing the instrument is based in INAF-IAPS (ref. person Pasquale Palumbo), INAF-OAPD (Alice Lucchetti) and CISAS-Padua University (Alessio Aboudan and Giacono Colombatti).
