Carnival of Space 498
by noreply@blogger.com (brian wang) from NextBigFuture.com on (#2E216)
The Carnival of Space 498 is up at Urban Astronomer
Universe Today - Juno Will Get No Closer To Jupiter Due To Engine Troubles
Jupiter's south pole. captured by the JunoCam on Feb. 2, 2017, from an altitude of about 62,800 miles (101,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/John Landino
On July 4th, 2016, the Juno mission established orbit around Jupiter, becoming the second spacecraft in history to do so (after the Galileo probe). Since then, the probe has been in a regular 53.4-day orbit (known as perijove), moving between the poles to avoid the worst of its radiation belts. Originally, Juno's mission scientists had been hoping to reduce its orbit to a 14-day cycle so the probe could make more passes to gather more data.
To do this, Juno was scheduled for an engine burn on Oct. 19th, 2016, during its second perijovian maneuver. Unfortunately, a technical error prevented this from happening. Ever since, the mission team has been pouring over mission data to determine what went wrong and if they could conduct an engine burn at a later date. However, the mission team has now concluded that this won't be possible.
The technical glitch which prevented the firing took place weeks before the engine burn was scheduled to take place, and was traced to two of the engines helium check valves.
Planetaria - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope discovers seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting nearby star
The Evolving Planet - SpaceX Mars Mission 'Red Dragon' Pushed Back to 2020
Read more
Universe Today - Juno Will Get No Closer To Jupiter Due To Engine Troubles
Jupiter's south pole. captured by the JunoCam on Feb. 2, 2017, from an altitude of about 62,800 miles (101,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/John Landino
On July 4th, 2016, the Juno mission established orbit around Jupiter, becoming the second spacecraft in history to do so (after the Galileo probe). Since then, the probe has been in a regular 53.4-day orbit (known as perijove), moving between the poles to avoid the worst of its radiation belts. Originally, Juno's mission scientists had been hoping to reduce its orbit to a 14-day cycle so the probe could make more passes to gather more data.
To do this, Juno was scheduled for an engine burn on Oct. 19th, 2016, during its second perijovian maneuver. Unfortunately, a technical error prevented this from happening. Ever since, the mission team has been pouring over mission data to determine what went wrong and if they could conduct an engine burn at a later date. However, the mission team has now concluded that this won't be possible.
The technical glitch which prevented the firing took place weeks before the engine burn was scheduled to take place, and was traced to two of the engines helium check valves.
Planetaria - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope discovers seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting nearby star
The Evolving Planet - SpaceX Mars Mission 'Red Dragon' Pushed Back to 2020
Read more