NASA - When Juno Probe Reaches Jupiter

"NASA promising July 4 big bang — and lots of science — when Juno probe reaches Jupiter" PBS NewsHour 6/29/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  On Independence Day NASA's Juno spacecraft (NASA home page) reaches the largest planet in our solar system and is expected to transmit pictures the 1.8 billion miles back to Earth.  But even more interesting than pictures, scientists hope to collect tons of data to help them understand Jupiter's formation — and our own.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins William Brangham.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  The holiday weekend is often a time for big blockbuster movies, and it's safe to say that concept has not been lost on NASA.

The space agency has just released a kind of movie trailer about what it hopes will be a nail-biting night on the Fourth of July.  That's when the Juno spacecraft, which is going to fly closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft has before, is supposed to reach its destination.  But getting to Jupiter comes with its own risks.

This is how NASA describes it in the trailer.

MAN:  It's a monster.  It's unforgiving.  It's relentless.  It's spinning around so fast its gravity is like a giant slingshot, slinging rocks, dust, electrons, whole comets.  Anything that gets close to it becomes its weapon.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  OK, that got my attention.

Our science correspondent Miles O'Brien is here to spell out some more.

MILES O'BRIEN, Science Correspondent (NewsHour):  William, I should have brought the popcorn.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Exactly.

We have been to Jupiter before.  NASA's been there a couple of times.  What's different this time?

MILES O'BRIEN:  Well, depending on how you count, we have had about 10 missions to Jupiter.

Most of them have been flybys, Voyager, Pioneer notable among them, New Horizons as well.  We of course had the orbiting mission of Galileo, which began in the mid-'90s into the early 2000s, which did most science around Jupiter and its moons.

And that's the big treasure trove of data.  And all the while, the Hubble telescope has captured a lot of interesting data from Jupiter.  And in particular, back in 1994, you may recall when the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, that fragment comet, struck Jupiter, Hubble got some amazing images of those impacts.

But all off this is skin-deep.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  So what are we trying to learn this time?

MILES O'BRIEN:  Well, there's a lot of things we can learn from Jupiter.

Full documentary (1:04:22)

SPACE - Robotic Mission to Europa

Ice skating anyone?

Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon

"NASA planning to send robotic mission to Europa, Jupiter's watery moon that may harbor life" Fox News 3/6/2014

NASA is plotting a daring robotic mission to Jupiter's watery moon Europa, a place where astronomers speculate there might be some form of life.

The space agency set aside $15 million in its 2015 budget proposal to start planning some kind of mission to Europa.  No details have been decided yet, but NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said Tuesday that it would be launched in the mid-2020s.

Robinson said the high radiation environment around Jupiter and distance from Earth would be a challenge.  When NASA sent Galileo to Jupiter in 1989, it took the spacecraft six years to get to the fifth planet from the sun.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute astronomer Laurie Leshin said it could be "a daring mission to an extremely compelling object in our solar system."

Past NASA probes have flown by Europa, especially Galileo, but none have concentrated on the moon, one of dozens orbiting Jupiter.  Astronomers have long lobbied for a mission to Europa, but proposals would have cost billions of dollars.

Last year, scientists discovered liquid plumes of water shooting up through Europa's ice.  Flying through those watery jets could make Europa cheaper to explore than just circling it or landing on the ice, said NASA Europa scientist Robert Pappalardo.

NASA will look at many competing ideas for a Europa mission, so the agency doesn't know how big or how much it will cost, Robinson said.  She said a major mission goal would be searching for life in the strange liquid water under the ice-covered surface.

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb said going to Europa would be more exciting than exploring dry Mars: "There might be fish under the ice."