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NASA Extends Juno Jupiter Mission By Three Years (gizmodo.com)
The Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter was supposed to end its mission by crashing into the gas giant next month. Not anymore! From a report: It turns out the scientific mission will be extended through at least 2021 so it can meet its goals, as Business Insider first reported yesterday. This will delay the probe's dramatic demise for at least a few years. "NASA has approved Juno to continue through 2022 to finish all of our originally planned science," Scott Bolton, Juno's principle investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, told Gizmodo in an email. "The orbits are longer than planned, and that is why Juno needs more time to gather our planned scientific measurements." Juno departed Earth for Jupiter in 2011 and arrived at the gas giant on July 4, 2016. Since then, it's sent back a host of valuable data that has revealed new insights into Jupiter, like the depth of the red spot, three-dimensional views of the gas below its surface, and how its auroras work.
The expensive part of the mission is already behind it. Since the science return so far has been excellent, why not monitor it for another three years to get bonus data?
No reason to waste a perfectly good spacecraft.
I'm speculating that the operational costs of the program are the prohibiting factor. In other words, it costs too much just to keep it running.
But instead of junking it . . . sell it instead! I'm sure the likes of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison would love to have a Jupiter satellite in their collections of toys.
Bezos could sell stuff to Jupiterians via Amazon Jupiter.
Zuckerberg could sell private data about Jupiterians.
Ellison has already been an asshole to everyone on planet Earth. He could now expand, and be an asshole to Jupiterians.
Oh, and they could continue to do some science, on the side. Maybe some stuff that NASA had to ditch because of the costs involved . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Juno was originally budgeted for $700M in 2003 and the full cost is now estimated to be $1.1B. That is not much of an overrun when you correct for inflation, and for added capabilities that were not part of the original budget.
Overall, the cost is about $3 per citizen. I am happy to pay my share, even if it means I have to skip a Starbuck's latte and brew a cup of tea in the microwave at work instead (Earl Grey, hot).
But instead of junking it . . . sell it instead!
Bad idea. The death plunge into the Jovian atmosphere is NOT "junking" it. Plenty of data will be collected during the descent, and there are many instruments on board solely for the plunge.
Delaying the plunge is reasonable. Cancelling it is not.
Early in the mission, the engines failed fire to reduce the orbit size. Subsequent engine tests would interfere with and overlap with the optimum observation time point of the orbit so they had to choose between debugging the engine glitch OR observing Jupiter.
They decided to observe rather than tinker with the engine, in part because if the engine were bad, it could muck up the orbit further. Thus, the left the orbit larger than planned, and that's why they want more time to get the same number of close-passes as originally planned.
Table-ized A.I.
You know, however, that Earl Grey is not the best tea for your health?
Only if you consume in excess, or combine with certain pharmaceutical drugs. Even then, it is no worse than grapefruit juice.
Propellant is usually the reason these missions are forced to end. If they're not out, or dangerously close to it (they need some reserved to send it into the planet), then by all means, keep the lights on as long as possible! It's not like there's another one on the way.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.