NASA's Juno probe is reportedly recovering its digital memory after a radiation surge forced it to reboot while on its mission to Jupiter. It is not clear whether the surge damaged the spacecraft when it was flying over Jupiter or over its volcanic moon Io.
The spacecraft completed its latest flyby of Jupiter on December 14. After that, NASA discovered that it had lost direct access to Juno's memory. The team successfully rebooted the probe's computer on December 17 and placed it in “safe mode”, with only essential systems operating. However, most of the data seems to be recuperated.
"The science data from the solar-powered spacecraft's most recent flyby of Jupiter and its moon Io appears to be intact," NASA stated.
Juno was launched in August 2011. It traveled more than 1,7 million miles and entered Jupiter`s orbit five years later in 2016. The probe became the first spacecraft ever to see through Jupiter's clouds. During its service, Juno has already collected three terabits of data about Jupiter.