Nasa Picks "juno" As Next New Frontiers Mission |
Nasa Picks "juno" As Next New Frontiers Mission |
Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Jun 1 2005, 10:10 PM
Post
#1
|
Guests |
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/jun/H...rontiers_2.html
Yeah, I know it ain't Saturn, but we don't seem to have any proper slot for Jovian news -- including yesterday's totally unexpected announcement that Amalthea's density is so low as to suggest that it's a highly porous ice object; maybe a captured Kuiper Belt Object reduced to rubble by infalling meteoroids. As Jason Perry says, this might explain those previously mysterious light-colored patches on Amalthea -- they may be its underlying ice, exposed by impacts that punched through the layer of sulfur spray-painted onto it by Io. Scott Bolton has been pretty talkative to me already about the design of Juno. It certainly won't be as good in the PR department as Galileo or Cassini, but it DOES carry a camera -- as much for PR as for Jovian cloud science, according to Bolton. And since the latitude of periapsis of its highly elliptical orbit will change radically during the primary mission, I wonder if they might be able to set up at least one close photographic flyby of Io and/or Amalthea? (I believe, by the way, that this selection is a bit ahead of schedule -- and it certainly indicates that NASA's science program under Griffin won't be a complete slave to Bush's Moon-Mars initiative.) |
|
|
Guest_Analyst_* |
Jun 16 2005, 12:34 PM
Post
#2
|
Guests |
Bruce, I want your optimism when it comes to future space missions. Your are talking about proposed missions in the 2015 to 2030 timeframe as if it's just waiting and there they are. They will not, at least not all. Roadmaps get changed, very quickly, new ones emerge and disappear.
Look at the Voyager odyssey in the late 1960ies and early 1970ies (TOPS, Grand Tour and so on), look at Galileo and Cassini (Cassini could have done several asteroid flybys, but they saved some dollars in cruise mode). I'm talking only about the cornerstone missions what left the pad. Or see Alan's fight for a (small) Pluto mission. Analyst, pessimist, realist? |
|
|
Jun 16 2005, 01:53 PM
Post
#3
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (Analyst @ Jun 16 2005, 05:34 AM) Bruce, I want your optimism when it comes to future space missions. Your are talking about proposed missions in the 2015 to 2030 timeframe as if it's just waiting and there they are. They will not, at least not all. Roadmaps get changed, very quickly, new ones emerge and disappear. Analyst, pessimist, realist? Perhaps in order to please Congress, NASA issues a new, sweeping mission document, revolutionary in its statement of mission goals, that promises a Whole New Plan about every 18 months, and it's like the last New Plan never existed (although the new new one often includes many of the elements of the old new one). Of course, with O'Keefe's (mercifully) short tenure, we also have had high turnover at the top, not to mention a change in the US Presidency, in the last few years. Griffin may be less faddish than his predecessors, but we'll have to see about that. |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 31st October 2024 - 11:50 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |