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NASA's Juno Mission |OT| Now in orbit around Jupiter - New images released (9/2)

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Smokey

Member
Galileo was deliberately crashed into Jupiter on September 21, 2003, to protect one of its discoveries -- a possible ocean beneath Jupiter's moons Europa

Purposely crashed? Really? First I've heard of this being done deliberately to protect some kind of secret. Was this known and I'm just late?
 
Purposely crashed? Really? First I've heard of this being done deliberately to protect some kind of secret. Was this known and I'm just late?

I don't think it was to protect a secret. It was literally to protect the moons. Crash the probe into Jupiter that way you don't accidentally contaminate the moons with terrestrial bacteria. The phrasing is pretty funny, though.
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
I don't think it was to protect a secret. It was literally to protect the moons. Crash the probe into Jupiter that way you don't accidentally contaminate the moons with terrestrial bacteria. The phrasing is pretty funny, though.

Yep, that is also the reason why they will eventually purposefully crash Juno into Jupiter as well, to prevent itself from accidentally crashing onto one of the moons and thereby potentially contaminating it. They’ll crash it on purpose before Jupiter’s radiation renders the probe uncontrollable due to radiation damage.
 

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
This late? So we're not getting anything until then? That kinda sucks considering it just reached the planet...

They turned off all the instruments to focus on getting Juno into orbit. They can't do a normal orbit due to the amount of radiation that Jupiter gives off. So they have to do these long elliptical orbits to come in, do the Science stuff, and get out before the radiation fries the instruments.

The first elliptical is going to be 53 days. The second one too, I think. After that, every 14 days until the mission ends.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Purposely crashed? Really? First I've heard of this being done deliberately to protect some kind of secret. Was this known and I'm just late?
I don't think crashed would be the correct term in this case. More like drowned.
 

Ovid

Member
Purposely crashed? Really? First I've heard of this being done deliberately to protect some kind of secret. Was this known and I'm just late?
I'm still upset about the Mars Polar Lander. I was so hyped for that (especially for the microphone).

At the time, I had my own conspiracy theories for that mission.

Also, I never heard about purposely crashing Galileo to protect a secret.

I don't think it was to protect a secret. It was literally to protect the moons. Crash the probe into Jupiter that way you don't accidentally contaminate the moons with terrestrial bacteria. The phrasing is pretty funny, though.
Yeah, that makes much more sense.
 
Galileo - Straight from Wikipedia:

On September 21, 2003, after 14 years in space and 8 years in the Jovian system, Galileo's mission was terminated by sending it into Jupiter's atmosphere at a speed of over 48 kilometers (30 mi) per second, eliminating the possibility of contaminating local moons with terrestrial bacteria.
 

Smokey

Member
Well that quote was from CNN. Read their as article on Juno as I was making my morning rounds between email and news at work. Just weird phrasing I guess.
 

Kickz

Member
End of August I think?

Dang, now I see why its called Juno.
Got that terrible dial up connection

Juno_United_Online_logo.png
 

ColdPizza

Banned
My boss says the calculation NASA used to almost perfectly time this was "simple math and physics"... which seems a little dismissive of what seems like a complicated mission.
 

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
when will there be a cool space mission like drilling through the ice on europa

Probably not in our lifetime, if I had to guess. I can't even imagine all the technical details of designing, sending, landing, and operating a drill large enough to get through the ice. IIRC the layer of ice is some 60 miles thick. Who knows what kind of theoretical space drill would be needed to get through that.
 

Crisco

Banned
My boss says the calculation NASA used to almost perfectly time this was "simple math and physics"... which seems a little dismissive of what seems like a complicated mission.

Well it's sort of true, when you take atmosphere out of the equation, the math becomes relatively straightforward.
 
The amount of radiation it gives off is just insane. Poor Jupiter, if only it had tried a little harder the Sol system could have been the Sols system.
 

E92 M3

Member
My boss says the calculation NASA used to almost perfectly time this was "simple math and physics"... which seems a little dismissive of what seems like a complicated mission.

Well, everything is simple when broken down to the core. But yes, it's very dismissive of a very complicated mission.
 
Gaf, I dont really know much about this kind of things, so I rather ask a question probably commo.

Why in the pictures taken by Juno you can't see any stars? What cause that?
 

fallout

Member
Gaf, I dont really know much about this kind of things, so I rather ask a question probably commo.

Why in the pictures taken by Juno you can't see any stars? What cause that?
Jupiter is really bright because of all the sunlight reflecting off of it. This makes the stars very hard to see as they are so much dimmer in comparison. It's basically the same reason why we can't see stars during the day on Earth.
 

jmdajr

Member
Gaf, I dont really know much about this kind of things, so I rather ask a question probably commo.

Why in the pictures taken by Juno you can't see any stars? What cause that?

Probably an exposure issue. If you take a picture of the sky at night, I don't think you can see stars either.
 

fallout

Member
Probably an exposure issue. If you take a picture of the night sky at night, I don't think you can see stars either.
This is another good point. They could take a longer exposure image and pick up the stars in the background, but Jupiter would looked like a big white blurry mess as a result.
 

TyrantII

Member
Gaf, I dont really know much about this kind of things, so I rather ask a question probably commo.

Why in the pictures taken by Juno you can't see any stars? What cause that?

Cameras don't do differences in brightness very well. Most cameras can only distinguish 3 fstops, while the human eye is between 6-9.

That's why you can see what's in the shade under a tree in a bright field, but a camera will either blow out the bright part of the image or darken the shade.

They dynamic range just isn't that great unless you composite the images at different exposure values; ie HDR.
 

Disxo

Member
They dont answer how do they feel about the budget Nasa currently has.
Its none of their business, but It would be awesome if they did say how do they feel.

Still, they give them money, they do the job.
 

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Some questions and answers from the AMA. Bold is the question.


  • What specific theories about Jupiter are you most looking forward to confirming whether they were accurate or not?

    I'm most interested in finding out what lurks beneath Jupiter's clouds. It's mind-blowing to think that we don't yet know what the interior is of the largest planet in the solar system. Is it rocky? Is it metallic? We just don't know. But that's exciting, and it's why we explore.


  • Hey guys/gal, hearing about this is super exciting. My question may seem stupid/silly, but seriously, how much time/planning goes into a mission such as this? Especially from Launch in Florida, the gravitational slingshot, up until it enter Orbit.

    Seeing this just blows my mind. How many backup plans do you have for a mission such as this if it doesn't go according to plan?


    A huge amount of time and planning goes into a mission like this! I personally started thinking about the ideas that eventually became Juno in about the year 2000, after a conversation with Scott Bolton, who had already begun to contemplate the measurements we can do. Our first proposal to NASA was in 2004, and we began designing real hardware in 2006.

    As far as backup plans are concerned, we always try to keep a range of possible contingencies in mind. For some of them, we make fairly detailed plans, and for some of the less likely scenarios we might just talk it over for a while and make a few notes about "what if."

    5+ years of development and building. 5 years of flying through interplanetary space from Earth to Jupiter (with a gravity slingshot along the way).


  • Will Juno be able to study the compositions of any of Jupiters moons?

    The focus of Juno is the interior of Jupiter. JunoCam, the education/public outreach camera, will image the satellites during the course of the mission, but at lower resolution than Voyager, Galileo, or New Horizons. That said, the composition of Jupiter will be an important consideration for future missions, such as the future Europa mission to unravel the complete story about Jupiter's formation.


  • I've heard that Earth's core and its magnetic field is what deflects radiation and makes it a hospitable environment. Is this true, and if so, is life impossible on planets that don't have magnetic fields?

    Planetary magnetic fields (like Earth and Jupiter have) definitely do deflect some of the radiation would otherwise impact planetary surfaces. However, there is a very active debate about the overall effect of having (or not) a magnetic field on how life would develop (or not) on a planet


  • Does Jupiter's massive gravitational pull make it more difficult to keep a probe in orbit?

    Actually, Jupiters massive gravitational pull helps to keep our probe in orbit. When we fired our main engine last night, we were moving at 54.1 km/sec. After firing our main engine, we were moving away from Jupiter at 53.7 km/sec. That's still really fast! But that really small decrease in orbital speed was enough to put us into a 53 day orbit (instead of a Jupiter flyby). Jupiter's pull is so strong, it would be very challenging now to get out of orbit. This wasn't what I initially expected when the navigators explained to me but it does help demonstrate how different things are when you are around such a massive planet.
 

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
President Obama @POTUS

Incredible! After a 5-year journey, we're up close and personal with our solar system's largest planet. Welcome to Jupiter, @NASAJuno!
 

Ferr986

Member
Question, why do they need to crash the probe? Why is it so bad for the probe to 'contaminate' the moon.

I'm not an expert by any means but it's fair to assume that if Europa could have life, if the probe contaminate it with Earth bacteria it could have an effect on that life forms.

EDIT: This is what they said on that AMA

Default plan is to purposefully crash into Jupiter about when we expect the electronics to start failing. We'll do this to avoid possibly accidentally contaminating Europa which might have liquid water (and life??). There are plans under consideration, pending operations results, that would allow Juno to stay in an orbit that would eventually crash "naturally" into the planet after potentially more orbits. --JRE

Re: deorbit: We think Jupiter's icy moon Europa has a subsurface ocean of liquid water; and because everywhere on Earth that we've found water, we've also found life, this is a good place for us to search. However, we don't want to go looking for life in the universe only to find that we brought it with us from Earth. We have to abide by something called Planetary Protection. (It's like the Prime Directive, but real.)

So, to keep Juno from ever running the risk of crashing into Europa and contaminating it, we will deorbit the spacecraft into Jupiter.
 

Robin64

Member
Question, why do they need to crash the probe? Why is it so bad for the probe to 'contaminate' the moon.

Firstly, if you do find something during a later exploration you want to be sure it came from that place and not some earlier contamination. Secondly, there's actually a space law forbidding the contamination of other planets and moons.
 
Firstly, if you do find something during a later exploration you want to be sure it came from that place and not some earlier contamination. Secondly, there's actually a space law forbidding the contamination of other planets and moons.

I'm not an expert by any means but it's fair to assume that if Europa could have life, if the probe contaminate it with Earth bacteria it could have an effect on that life forms.

EDIT: This is what they said on that AMA

What about the other probe(or whatever it was) that was sent to Jupiter that flew through the atmosphere for a few moments before it's demise due to...whatever Jupiter does to things it doesn't like?
 

Ferr986

Member
What about the other probe(or whatever it was) that was sent to Jupiter that flew through the atmosphere for a few moments before it's demise due to...whatever Jupiter does to things it doesn't like?

Galileo? I only know that, and it was also crashed onto Jupiter for the same reason. Jupiter's radiation ends up fucking the probes, so they have to end up being crashed when they are still operative.
 

Xe4

Banned

Well, excluding dealing with General relativity, most orbital mechanics is simple physics invented hundreds of years ago. At worst there are calculations that have to be calculated numerically instead of solved analytically. It in a lot of ways is easier than dealing with aerodynamics, because you don't have air residence and flow and stuff mucking up the calculations. It's why most accidents happen while launching or landing.

What makes it difficult is coordinating the orbital mechanics with all of the other technical aspects on the mission, coding the computer to pull off the manuver automatically, and doing it correct the 1st time knowing that I'd you fail you will destroy a million or possibly billion dollar machine.
 

Caayn

Member
I'm not an expert by any means but it's fair to assume that if Europa could have life, if the probe contaminate it with Earth bacteria it could have an effect on that life forms.

EDIT: This is what they said on that AMA

Firstly, if you do find something during a later exploration you want to be sure it came from that place and not some earlier contamination. Secondly, there's actually a space law forbidding the contamination of other planets and moons.
Stupid question but what about the Mars rover? Didn't that contaminate Mars?
 
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