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NASA: After Juno’s Stunning Jupiter Flyby, What’s Next For America’s Space Agency?

By Anya Wassenberg
Published on: 12:00 PST, Jul 5, 2016

NASA scientists and researchers erupted into applause at the announcement yesterday that the Juno spacecraft had successfully entered into orbit of the dangerous gas giant Jupiter. After what Universe Today called a “do or die mission,” what’s next for NASA and its Planetary Science division?

Maneuvering the Juno spacecraft into Jupiter’s orbit required a precise series of operations and its success was never a sure thing. Scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory were jubilant when the news was announced, as reported in the Independent.

“We conquered Jupiter.”

NASA and the Juno Mission to Jupiter

It took NASA’s Juno Mission five years to travel the 1.8 billion miles or 2.8 billion kilometers, barreling through the solar system at speeds of 150,000 miles per hour. During its 20-month mission, Juno will conduct a series of 37 flybys that will bring it to within 2,900 miles or 4,667 kilometers of the planet’s cloud cover or toposphere.

Unlike Earth, on Jupiter there is no clear delineation between the gasses of the atmosphere and the planet itself. Hydrogen, helium, and other gases that would be considered part of the atmosphere on Earth are drawn into the giant planet by Jupiter’s strong gravitational force.

After Juno’s current 20-month mission to probe into Jupiter’s hot, turbulent atmosphere, the spacecraft will make a one-way descent into the planet’s core to help NASA scientists determine whether the giant planet is composed entirely of gas or whether there is in fact a solid core of some type. Juno’s mission will inevitably end with the destruction of the spacecraft in Jupiter’s unforgiving atmospheric conditions, which include extremely high temperatures, turbulent storms, and winds that reach upwards of 400 miles per hour. The high winds and constant storms create intense particle radiation.

NASA – after Jupiter flyby, what’s next?

If Juno and the Jupiter flyby arguably represents NASA’s most impressive feat to date, it may not hold that title for very long.

As reported in Universe Today on Monday, NASA has announced the extension of no less than nine of its space missions, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). NASA also announced its continued participation in the Mars Express mission operated by the European Space Agency. The extended missions continue to send incredible volumes of data back to earth.

Mars, one of Earth’s neighbors in the solar system, is clearly an international priority, with several missions orbiting, exploring, and mapping our neighbor in the solar system, looking for suitable places for human exploration. They operate in a race with SpaceX and Elon Musk’s vow to send an unmanned rocket to the red planet by 2018, as reported in Tek22.

Two of NASA’s existing missions that will be extended are already in exciting territory and set to surpass their own mission goals.

Launched in 2007, NASA’s Dawn Mission completed its primary objective on June 30 of this year. The NASA Dawn Mission chalked up a milestone a little over a year ago on March 6, 2015, when it reached Ceres, the first dwarf planet to be explored in human history. The Dawn spacecraft was also the first mission to orbit two celestial bodies, exploring the asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012. The mission has been extended into the rest of this year, with fuel reserves being the only limiting factor. The mission extension has been in a large part possible because NASA’s precise handling and design has meant that its store of hydrazine maneuvering fuel has not yet run out. Dawn will remain in what is called a Low Altitude Mapping Orbit of Ceres indefinitely – even after it can no longer communicate back to Earth. NASA officials were quoted in Universe Today.

“The mission exceeded all expectations originally set for its exploration of protoplanet Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres.”

Launched in 2006, New Horizons has fascinated astronomers and the global community with an incredible stream of images and mapping of Pluto, the dwarf planet, since its historic flyby nearly a year ago on July 14, 2015. The appropriately named NASA New Horizons Mission has been extended into 2019, with a view to probing beyond the planets and farther into the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt, located beyond Neptune’s orbit, is a region of space composed of multiple objects, including icy asteroids and three dwarf planets, including Pluto.

From Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft will continue on to a small object in the Kuiper Belt called 2014 MU69. NASA scientists are eager to explore 2014 MU69 because they believe it contains some of the earliest material of our solar system. Studying it will provide clues on how the solar system was formed. NASA Director of Planetary Science Jim Green at NASA HQ in Washington, D.C., was quoted in a media release.

“We’re excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn’t even discovered when the spacecraft launched.”

NASA’s optimism comes in the face of dwindling funding from the Obama administration, and even as plans continue, missions that will extend into fiscal years 2017 and 2018 will depend on Congress appropriating the necessary funds. The string of spectacular successes does come at a cost. NASA’s unprecedented Jupiter orbit yesterday was achieved at a price tag of over $1 billion.

[Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech]

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