Interview on Spanish public TV with the Director of the MDSCC Space Center in Robledo de Chavela

To mark the arrival of the Juno spacecraft to Jupiter after a 5-year voyage, Ángel Martín Álvarez, the Director of the MDSCC in Robledo de Chavela gave an interview to RTVE on Friday, July 1, later aired during the July 4 news broadcast.

NASA’s Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers programme, whose goal is to study the planet’s atmosphere, gravity and magnetosphere in depth. Some important aspects of the planet remain a mystery. Thanks to microwave radiometry, we will have a chance to study the planet for 20 months from a distance of 5,000 km in an effort to determine its origin, learn about its internal structure and the make-up and characteristics of its atmosphere and magnetosphere. Understanding Jupiter’s origin is essential to learning how our solar system was born and how its giant planets formed and evolved.

Isdefe handles the operation, maintenance and technical support of the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex (MDSCC) for the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA), which is responsible for the facilities, as per the 1964 agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the government of the United States. The MDSCC is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014.

Also, on July 18 and 19, Maurice Henderson, an Engineering graduate from the University of Pennsylvania who works with NASA to popularize science and education and leads NASA’s “Science on a Sphere” project, will give a talk titled “Juno, Mission to Jupiter. A Look Inside the Gas Giant’s Structure.”

For more information on the Juno mission: https://www.isdefe.es/noticias/juno-mission-conferencia-los-expertos-la-nasa-sobre-la-misi-n-espacial-j-piter

To see the interview: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/telediario/telediario-15-horas-04-07-16/3653119/ (Starting at minute 39:35)

For more information on the talks: https://goo.gl/j0mIuv