Juno Extended Mission, Perijove 34-76 |
Juno Extended Mission, Perijove 34-76 |
Sep 2 2020, 08:05 PM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 3241 Joined: 11-February 04 From: Tucson, AZ Member No.: 23 |
At today's Outer Planet Assessment Group (OPAG) meeting, Scott Bolton gave a presentation on Juno, providing an update on the mission and providing more information on its extended mission proposal. The proposal has been sent to NASA and they expect a final decision later this year.
The proposed extended mission starts where the current one ends at perijove 34 in June 2021 and continues through orbit 76 in September 2025. The continued northward progression of the perijove latitude, and continued lower altitude of the ascending node, is going to enable a lot of great science both at Jupiter (higher resolution views of Jupiter's poles) and of its satellites. Most excitingly for me, Juno will perform several flybys of the Galilean satellites. This includes a 1000-km encounter with Ganymede next June during PJ34, a 320-km encounter with Europa in late 2022, and TWO Io flybys in early 2024 at an altitude of 1500 km. There are also a number of "Voyager-class" encounters with Ganymede, Europa, and Io between mid-2021 and mid-2025. The PDF for Scott Bolton's presentation can be found on the page for the OPAG meeting: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/meetings/opag2020fall/ -------------------- &@^^!% Jim! I'm a geologist, not a physicist!
The Gish Bar Times - A Blog all about Jupiter's Moon Io |
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Jan 20 2021, 09:46 PM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 3241 Joined: 11-February 04 From: Tucson, AZ Member No.: 23 |
Animation of the Ganymede flyby:
https://youtu.be/DsPcCRKLP7w Animation of the Europa flyby: https://youtu.be/r9bx1GcoqEE -------------------- &@^^!% Jim! I'm a geologist, not a physicist!
The Gish Bar Times - A Blog all about Jupiter's Moon Io |
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Jan 22 2021, 02:00 AM
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2254 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
Animation of the Ganymede flyby: https://youtu.be/DsPcCRKLP7w Animation of the Europa flyby: https://youtu.be/r9bx1GcoqEE Great animations. For Europa I notice that Juno has a nice view of the patch of poorly imaged terrain in the northern hemisphere near longitude 320 degrees, see e.g. time ~2:30 and onwards in the animation. It seems to me that at least in theory, JunoCam should be able to improve the imaging coverage for this area. The problem with this is that apparently it is not possible to image this area if the spacecraft has to be Earth-pointed (it would have to be far from Earth-pointed it seems). |
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Jan 22 2021, 02:12 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
This is almost hard to believe, but if IVO is chosen and both Europa Clipper and JUICE meet their planned schedules, there could be three Jupiter orbiters operating in 2032, each devoted primarily to a different Galilean, and with Callisto itself getting far more than enough close flybys to get a thorough exploration. This is like a long journey through the desert suddenly arriving at a river.
That said, as EC and JUICE are approved, but IVO is as of yet not, I look most forward to the Io data from Juno, and secondarily to any possible Europa plumes search, particularly in the sense that Io and Europa are potentially time-varying, while Ganymede is, notionally, not. One extremely noteworthy opportunity: The icy shell of Europa is known not to rotate synchronously with respect to Europa's interior, but the baseline in time from Voyager to Galileo was not sufficient, at the given resolution, to give us a first order measurement of the motion which should, in principle, be observable. Just one good image of Europa might suddenly give us that value. The timeline from Voyager 1 to Juno is just about double that of Voyager 1 to Galileo. |
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Jan 23 2021, 07:20 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
This is almost hard to believe, but if IVO is chosen and both Europa Clipper and JUICE meet their planned schedules, there could be three Jupiter orbiters operating in 2032, each devoted primarily to a different Galilean, and with Callisto itself getting far more than enough close flybys to get a thorough exploration. This is like a long journey through the desert suddenly arriving at a river. I agree, that would be a most amazing period of exploration, although I don't like counting chickens until they are hatched, as they say. The Jupiter system is still my favorite (sorry, Saturn) in terms of diversity and some of the "big" questions we want answered. I may be very biased here, but then again, so is my avatar image... -------------------- |
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