The estimates of how much they had / needed included TCM's such as this.

Yes, they are, and follow up observations being scheduled, conducted and analyzed as well.

People seem to be under the impression that Kepler is a fast results mission. It is not. This stuff takes time and careful analysis. I really do wish people would just calm down, there's almost a sense of panic about this stuff.

Careful. There is a world of difference between a planet being in the habitable zone, and a planet being habitable.

Moreover - your extrapolation presumes there are equal numbers of stars across the whole sky. There are not.

Oh - it wont be talking to cell towers. The signal strength for cell towers drops off with altitude very very quickly. It'll simply be a computer that speaks to other spacecraft components.

Well - if we knew that, then we wouldn't have needed to launch MARVEL anyway

I was told that the spin axis doesn't change. It's basically earth pointed throughout. Thus, it doesn't slide that axis across the system as you suggest. Yes - at some point, every moons orbit results in every moon passing through that plane at some point. However, you need a very close approach to get a worthwhile image, for those inner minor moons, it's at perihelion - so the moon will have to be on the EXACT opposite side of the spaceraft from Jupiter. And smear is a moot point - JunoCam is pushbroom.

Maybe I'm missing something regarding the orientation of the spacecraft and it's geometry - but it's only going to be at brief and fortunate times like the attached when a minor moon's going to both in the FOV, and close enough to be worth imaging. Basically - of the 360 degrees of it's orbit, those minor moons have to be in an 18 degree wide slab of it (less, actually ) to enter the JunoCam FOV, and do so fairly close to periapsis - a 1 in 20 event.

I just had a quick look using Eyes on the Solar System (it has a baseline Juno trajectory)

CA's to Metis, Amalthea et al are on the order of 30,000 miles. Metis might be 7 pixels across. Amalthea maybe 20-30 pixels. We're talking on the order of 10km/pixel at those distances - and it would have to be a very very fortunate coincidence of geometry for them to even cross Junocams FOV.

Juno's orbit is near polar, remember - and at this time it'll be taking it's principle science data of Jupiter itself.

Probably my busiest day on lab yet I find myself tweeting, facebooking and foruming the most, when I'm busiest - it's counterintuitive, but that's how it goes

That's just the coma - not the nucleus itself. Stardust's Navcam is 3.5 deg FOV, so we wont resolve the nucleus until very near close approach.

No - NEAR rendezvoused with, orbited and then landed on Eros.

Definitive methane wasn't a reality until the beginning of '09. PHX was selected over MARVEL, ARES and SCIM in late '03

If you want to apply hindsight- then you can't call it a mistake.

PHX was the right selection at the time given the MODY results.

We will have MAVEN between now and MTGO to start the building of our understanding.

The rules are fairly clear - you don't command during conjunction ( because you never know what that inconvenient ball of plasma will do to the signal at the far end )

Opportunity will be in touch with Odyssey during conjunction, it's not out of the question that Spirit might attempt that as well, assuming listening windows were uplinked to Odyssey ahead of time.

You can't be serious H4I, Ikaros and Akatsuki are going to be thousands, probably millions of miles apart.

Whilst I don't think that's been stated officially everywhere, we can take it as fairly certain that the conjunction plan will not involve IDD work - and thus the Mossbauer will be taking data throughout conjunction (it'll really benefit from a solid two weeks of integration given that it's almost 10 half lives old now )

It happens with every D4-Heavy - it's the exact same thing every time. It's scary, it's photogenic, and it's basically - supposed to happen. A leak infers something wrong...but this is entirely nominal.

You can also use http://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=90027

Actually heard the beacon about 2 hrs earlier from the roof of Bldg 264 on lab with my Yaesu 817 and an arrow antenna. Can't wait to see it in an evening pass soon - should be nice and bright!

As linked to earlier today in this very thread, triggering the resulting discussion regarding the changed to the deployment of the mobility system.

The blue and white thing on the right? Handling mechanism for the stacked spacecraft - that's the drive that turns the thing to whatever angle they need to work on it.

The animation is several years old and the deployment sequence has been changed since it was made - that's all.

An updated animation under production.

It's catastrophically misleading. It wouldn't be a 'new sun' - it would be a very very very bright star. Citing 2012 is just tabloid sensationalism,

"When this happens a giant explosion will occur, tens of millions of times brighter than the sun." - and it's hundreds of millions of times further away.


Sorry - there's so much sensationalist garbage in that - I don't think Joe Public is going to come out the other end 'informed'.

Ignoring Jasons superb work - did you not look here : http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/C...t:Radar+Mapper:

If not, why not?

Erosion can also cause sharp edges.

And yet you still want to play X-sols x Y metres.

After 7 years.

Don't we ALL know better than that these days?