NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / John Landino
NASA has announced that it will expand the missions for two of its interplanetary explorers launched over the past decade – the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter and the InSight lander on the surface of Mars.
The Juno expansion means that the spacecraft will now work in the Jovian system until 2025. This will effectively transform the spacecraft from a mission to study Jupiter into a full-fledged Jovian system explorer, complete with close flight planes of several of Jupiter’s moons as well as its system of rings.
Back in the inner solar system on the surface of Mars, the InSight mission will now last until December 2022. During these additional two years, the lander will continue to use its seismometer to identify Marsquakes, as well as gather detailed information about the weather. to the surface.
After an independent review panel determined that both missions had an extraordinary science to date, they recommended the expansion of both to NASA. “The Senior Review has confirmed that these two planetary science missions are likely to bring new discoveries and raise new questions about our solar system,” said Lori Glaze, director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington.
Excited about Juno
For us, the extensive Juno mission is very tantalizing. Following its launch in 2011, Juno entered a polar orbit around Jupiter in July 2016. Since then, he has completed more than 30 orbits around the largest planet in the Solar System and studied the composition and magnetic field of Jupiter. It also survived an exceptionally harsh radiation environment.
The expansion indicates that scientists and engineers believe that the spacecraft is healthy enough to continue working and that they can more than double the number of orbits in the Jupiter system to 76. Over the next five years, the spacecraft will so adapt that Juno will be able to fly much closer to some of Jupiter’s most intriguing moons.
As part of a research plan submitted by Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, the spacecraft will fly this summer to within 1000 km of Ganymede’s surface to within 320 km of Europe by the end of 2022 and to within 1500 km of the volcanically active Io twice in 2024.
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Three of the white oval storms known as the “String of Pearls” are visible at the top of the picture. Each of the alternating light and dark atmospheric bands is wider than Earth and rages hundreds of kilometers per hour around Jupiter.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran
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Close-up of an enhanced color image of Jupiter’s clouds obtained by NASA’s spacecraft Juno.
NASA / SWRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran
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An image of a crescent moon Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Roman Tkachenko
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NASA’s Juno spacecraft struck the upper locks of Jupiter’s atmosphere when JunoCam cut this image on February 2 from an altitude of about 14,500 km above the giant planet’s swirling cloud tops.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Roman Tkachenko
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Jupiter’s south pole from an altitude of 52,000 km. The oval features are cyclones with a diameter of up to 1,000 km.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Betsy Asher Hall / Gervasio Robles
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This image highlights a swirling storm just south of one of the white oval storms on Jupiter.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Jason Major
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This improved color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter appears to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Roman Tkachenko
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The face of Jupiter? By rotating the image 180 degrees and orienting it from the south, two white oval storms turn into eyeballs, and the “face” of Jupiter is revealed.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Jason Major
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A close-up of the clear clouds that see the southern tropical zone of Jupiter.
NASA / SWRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran
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The organized turmoil of Jupiter’s belts and zones, approaching the pole, turns into clusters of disorganized filament structures, streams of air resembling giant tangled strings.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gabriel Fiset
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A Perijove Pass: This series of enhanced color images shows how fast the viewing geometry of NASA’s Juno spacecraft is changing as it swings through Jupiter.
NASA / SWRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstadt / Sean Doran
With these aircraft, Juno can study surface changes on Ganymede since the Voyager and Galileo missions and investigate the 3D structure of Ganymede’s magnetosphere. If it gets so close to Europe, Juno should be able to identify regions where the moon’s ice shell is thick or thin and confirm the presence of underground liquid water. Juno will make the short-term changes in volcanic activity, which developed dramatically between Voyager and Galileo over several months, in the short-term Io.
Extensive missions cost a fraction of the amount of large-scale interplanetary spacecraft being built and launched – often exceeding $ 1 billion – so it’s a bonus for exploring the solar system.