NASA loves acronyms,
and so I just simply abbreviated Microwave Radiator as MWR.
From its name, it measures the radiation in the microwave region.
Now that sounds like a lot of highfalutin scientific terms,
but it's really pretty simple.
What we're actually doing is measuring the thermal radiation
from the atmosphere of Jupiter, beneath the clouds.
And at every wavelength
we have six wavelengths on the instrument
every wavelength is designed to look at a different region of the atmosphere,
measure the thermal radiation coming up
from some different region in the atmosphere.
And by measuring them with the spacecraft,
we'll be able to put that together into a picture
you know, a three-dimensional picture of the atmospheric structure of Jupiter.
What we've come up with
as the most effective way to build an antenna
is a big, flat array that's about five-feet square all the way around.
It's as big as the side of a spacecraft,
which is not a coincidence because
we sort of sized the spacecraft to hold an antenna for our longest wavelength.
Now the other wavelengths are progressively smaller by factors of two
at every step. So it turns out
another side of the spacecraft can hold all of the rest.
So, we have no idea what we're going to see,
because nobody's ever seen this region before.
So, it's going to be a surprise to all of us
when we get the information back,
so we expect to discover all sorts of new things.