InSight and Juno Keep on Trucking (axios.com) 20
NASA's InSight lander on Mars and the Juno orbiter at Jupiter have new leases on life. From a report: The spacecraft are expected to continue gathering data about their respective planetary targets during their newly extended missions, allowing scientists to learn more about seismic activity on Mars and turn their attention to the moons of Jupiter. Juno's mission has been extended to September 2025 or whenever its life ends with a crash into Jupiter's atmosphere. InSight will continue its mission to study Mars' geology and seismic activity from the Martian surface through December 2022. Both missions are expected to make good use of their extended time at Jupiter and Mars. InSight's extra two years will see the spacecraft collect more data on marsquakes to help create a long-term dataset that scientists can refer to for years to come, according to NASA. Juno will broaden the scope of its studies to observe Jupiter's rings and moons including flybys of Ganymede, Europa and Io.
Ditch SLS, give the money to JPL (Score:3)
I know they are not gonna ditch it until Starship/Vulcan/New Glenn are operational and proven but I can't help but think how much more science and progress we would have spent that 9 billion on a dumb disposable rocket on more science probes and satellites doing real exploration out there. I wasn't alive but I long for the days when we were sending Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager probes out as fast as we can build them.
Re:Ditch SLS, give the money to JPL (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't happen because satellites and probes aren't pork barreled hard enough to make congressional districts do the happy dance. If they could find a way to propose probes that never materialize yet cost billions and billions of dollars, they'd be all about throwing money at probes. It's an unfortunate catch-22 of modern funding based on politics. The more likely you are to succeed at the original proposed cost, the less likely you are to get funded. The more likely you are to stretch projected times and budgets, sometimes by multiples, the more likely you are to get funding. Cost plus, baby! It's what's for dinner!
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Like it or not, space funding is very much predicated on stuff being exciting for the voters. Most of whom have no idea why observing jupiters rings is interesting, but can definately be excited by "The rich man with the electric cars is going to build a mars base!". The trick is to use that interest to make sure something is built that *eventually* could do the science.
I mean you can lift a LOT of stuff into space with those big dumb rockets.
Stupid way to budget (Score:4, Interesting)
Every day the Opportunity rovers spent on Mars after the 91s had to be financed as a "mission extension", for 14 years. Hubble was launched in 1990 and budgeted (IIRC) for five years, the subsequent 25 years have all been "mission extensions". Voyager's 'Grand Tour' was denied funding, it was only budgeted to Saturn, every day since August of 1981 is a "mission extension". This is what happens when you have lawyers masquerading as politicians allowed to run an engineering program.
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Before Huygens landed we were shown beautiful hi-res photos from an Earth-based simulation.
So I was severely disappointed by the lo-res pictures images it actually returned.
I get that that is the best it could do given its design constraints, but it wasn't what we were led to expect.
Lies to get funded and over-promising and under-delivering - it's time the lawyer/scientist/politician/engineers stopped playing these games and were honest about their mission's chances, because tricking the politicos just mean
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Over-promising and under-delivering? WTF are you babbling about?? The Voyagers have been traveling for FOURTY FIVE YEARS after being built with a budget for FIVE and are our only functioning probes in interstellar space. Galileo was launched in 1989 and performed flawlessly until its fuel was finally depleted for 14 years, Cassini lasted 20 years, both were only funded at a level adequate for less than half of their actual mission durations. Huygens' video wasn't in 4K resolution? Poor baby. It soft
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Due to human error, one of the com channels on Huygens wasn't switched on during descent, halving the number of photos taken. Because of planned redundancy of coverage, the extra images were to be combined to increase resolution. But the lost channel blew that plan. Bleep happens.
We're actually lucky because the entire Huygens mission a
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Thank you for that explanation.
I followed the mission as closely as I was able at the time and didn't hear this.
Was it covered up?
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I don't believe these stories were directly censored, but I suspect spokespeople for the European space agencies downplayed or skipped them out of embarrassment. It was secondary stories and space tech blogs where I caught word of them.
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The press doesn't cover science and technology stories if there aren't pretty pictures. The absence of pretty pictures doesn't draw ad revenue.
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No, this is what happens when you fund in increments rather than simply handing out an open ended blank check. AKA pretty bog standard stuff for anyone who does serious budgeting.
Not Juno the free ISP? (Score:3, Interesting)
When I first read the headline, I thought maybe that Juno, the free ISP was "still trucking."
So I looked it up, and apparently, it is?!? And their official website actually says they offer "compatibility with popular instant messaging programs offered on AOL, Earth Link, MSN and Yahoo"
Maybe it's time that they do crash into Jupiter's atmosphere.
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"TRUCKING" ?! (Score:2)
They are space probes gliding through the vacuum in the outer reaches of our solar system, and the best word you can think of to describe that is "TRUCKING" ?!
Re: "TRUCKING" ?! (Score:2)
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This sentence makes no sense (Score:2)
mission has been extended to September 2025 or whenever its life ends
What is that date for then? Logically, either it fails before September 2025 and there's nothing they can do about it, or it fails after September 2025 and the mission will be extended until it fails. In both cases, the mission ends when the probe dies, which was a much simpler thing to say.
2 questions (Score:2)
InSite had trouble digging deep enough into the soil to measure sub-surface temperature. Did they ever solve that?
Another curiosity is that it was speculated Juno's regular-light camera would quickly degenerate because of Jupiter's radiation, lasting only a few orbits. Imaging wasn't the primary focus* of the mission, so they didn't spend on a radiation-hardened camera.
But the cheapo one has lasted beyond expectations, returning spectacular views of the paisley poles. However, I wonder if it's showing wear
Juno mission extended because of failure (Score:2)
Juno is cool, and I'm glad is gathering data. But, it is important to know that it's primary thruster failed, so it was unable to achieve it's intended 11 day orbit of Jupiter. Instead, it used maneuvering thrusters to achieve a ~53 day orbit. The mission extension was necessary to collect as much data as possible, maybe even as much data as originally intended.