Once the whole spacecraft gets put together it's important for us to operate it in a flight-like way.
So we enact a policy on our missions here at JPL called "Test as you Fly."
We say, okay, we're going to pretend that we're launching the spacecraft today and we set the universe simulator in the clean room to pretend it's launch day.
Juno has a very complex instrument suite.
The instruments are tested both individually at their home institutions as well as part of the flight system on the path towards launch.
We try to replicate both the conditions, the timing, the personnel, the procedures, the products, the hardware, everything
similar to what we would have actually in space when we're flying.
We will go through acoustic energy testing to make sure that the instruments will be able to withstand the launch environment.
We'll go through a thermal vac test where we'll simulate being in a vaccuum in space.
We pretend to fly the mission on the ground
and then we make sure we understand the differences between the environment we have on the ground and the environment we have in space.
It's a blast to march through that testing suite and make sure that you've thought of all the contingencies
and tried to break it and make sure it's going to do what it needs to do.