Recovery of JunoCam by Annealing in the Jovian Radiation Environment

Juno’s JunoCam instrument has been exposed to the Jovian radiation environment for over nine years. It survived the Juno primary mission with little degradation, but during the extended mission has suffered two different radiation-induced problems, the first involving a start-up issue with a linear regulator and the second involving CCD image sensor performance. Both anomalies were overcome with high-temperature annealing. Here we describe the sequence of events and our subsequent responses to maintain instrument functionality, through orbit 57 and beyond. The JunoCam experience may inform the design of heating systems for future spacecraft headed to high-radiation environments, as well as the operations flows needed to call upon them quickly and flexibly for annealing in a spacecraft emergency or for periodic preventative annealing cycles.