Nasa Picks "juno" As Next New Frontiers Mission |
Nasa Picks "juno" As Next New Frontiers Mission |
Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
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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.) |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
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And, for one recent JPL study of a Titan aerobot mission, see one of the presentations from the preceding OPAG meeting in February:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/feb_05_meetin...resentation.pdf |
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![]() Senior Member ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 ![]() |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jun 29 2005, 03:31 PM) And, for one recent JPL study of a Titan aerobot mission, see one of the presentations from the preceding OPAG meeting in February: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/feb_05_meetin...resentation.pdf It seems that the case for an aerobot is seriously helped by the fact that we have hardly a clue how drivable Titan's light-colored terrain might be, and the Huygens view makes it look like no wheeled craft would have a prayer. It would likely roll into a crevice, or land somewhere surrounded by crevices, and have its mobility quickly put to an end! It's possible that we could get useful recon from, eg, radar (Cassini's or Earthbound) and ascertain that there are smooth areas, but an aerobot easily trumps this possibility. I'd rather have a three-instrument aerobot floating over many kinds of terrain than a standout instrument package on wheels. Ditto for Venus... Although I think a stationary lander would be sufficient for many purposes there. Big difference: we've already seen multiple landing sites on Venus, which surely represent most of the terrain of that whole world, vs. one on Titan, which surely doesn't! |
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