Juno Jupiter Probe Won't Move Into Shorter Orbit After All (space.com)

NASA announced today that their Juno spacecraft will not move into a closer orbit around Jupiter as originally planned. "Juno slipped into a highly elliptical, 53-Earth-day-long orbit around Jupiter when it arrived at the giant planet on July 4, 2016," reports Space.com. From their report: The probe was supposed to perform an engine burn in October to reduce its orbital period to 14 days, but an issue with two helium valves postponed that maneuver. The engine burn has now been canceled, meaning Juno will stay where it is through the end of its mission. "During a thorough review, we looked at multiple scenarios that would place Juno in a shorter-period orbit, but there was concern that another main engine burn could result in a less-than-desirable orbit," Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "The bottom line is, a burn represented a risk to completion of Juno's science objectives." But Juno should still be able to accomplish its mission goals in the longer orbit, NASA officials said. In fact, the 53-day path will allow the probe to perform some "bonus science" in the outer regions of Jupiter's magnetosphere, they added.

Comments

That didn't take long

[dbIII]

He's managed to piss off everyone except Russia already

I should have checked the breaking news first, Russia is now on that list after a spectacularly pointless bit of dick waving by Pence. Russia is going to be held to account for ... what exactly? Did Pence lose his notes?

Re:Does this mean more fuel for thrusters?

[Anonymous Coward]

The life limit for Juno is radiation. You need to drive it into Jupiter before the flight computer fails. There will be NO chance for a moon tour, because Juno didn't follow the very stringent planetary protection process you'd need if you were going to Europa. That's why it's being destroyed, rather than "run til it falls apart" - they don't want to crash into Europa and contaminate it.

Re:Good idea for now

[mrsquid0]

The plan is to crash Juno into Jupiter at the end of the mission, so we will get some nice close-up imagery at the end. This will require a manoeuver to change the orbit. The telemetry from the de-orbit burn may provide some useful information about the valves. The reason to de-orbit Juno into the planet is to be sure the probe does not contaminate any of the Jovian moons at some point in the future. After all, we do not want to (eventually) go to Europa and find e. coli spreading from the crash site.