Juno Extended Mission, Perijove 34-76 Options

[Bjorn Jonsson]

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).

[JRehling]

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.

[Decepticon]

Is the Late 2021 Europa encounter still happening?

Alt 88,000km Flyby

[ugordan]

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...

[vjkane]

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.

The latest information I have on IVO show's it entering Jovian orbit and having it's first Io encounter in August 2033.