NASA's Plan To Put Juno Closer To Jupiter Delayed (www.bgr.in) 6
An anonymous reader shares an IANS report: Mission managers for the Juno probe to Jupiter have decided to delay the upcoming burn of its main rocket motor -- designed to put the spacecraft closer to the largest planet in our solar system -- until December, the US space agency said on Saturday. The decision was made in order to further study the performance of a set of valves that are part of the spacecraft's fuel pressurization system. This burn, originally scheduled for October 19, called the period reduction maneuver (PRM), was to reduce Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53.4 to 14 days. "It is important to note that the orbital period does not affect the quality of the science that takes place during one of Juno's close flybys of Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "The mission is very flexible that way. The data we collected during our first flyby on August 27th was a revelation, and I fully anticipate a similar result from Juno's October 19th flyby," Bolton noted.
how much closer? (Score:5, Funny)
She's his sister AND his wife, I don't think they can put them much closer than that!
Wait for December (Score:2)
Sooner science-- (Score:2)
Interestingly, by not doing the burn they will get more science on this orbit, not less, since most of the science instruments would have been off if they had been doing the perijove burn for orbit lowering (but can now be turned on, to make this a science pass instead of a burn.)
Of course, they will have to spend a later perijove pass for the burn instead of doing science (most likely on the December perijove), so over the whole mission they don't actually get any more science-- but this change means that