NASA Briefing to Preview Upcoming Mission to Jupiter

[4th and Long]

NASA Briefing to Preview Upcoming Mission to Jupiter

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA will hold a news briefing at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) on Wednesday, July 27, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to discuss preparations for the upcoming Juno mission to Jupiter. The briefing will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Juno, scheduled to launch Aug. 5, will improve our understanding of our solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft and will provide images and the first detailed glimpse of its poles.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/528774main_pia13746-43_946-710.jpg
NASA's Juno spacecraft passes in front of Jupiter in this artist's depiction. The Juno mission is the first of NASA's three planetary missions launching this year, making 2011 one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[Easy 6]

Its gonna get sucked into a wormhole by the Monolith...

[4th and Long]

Its gonna get sucked into a wormhole by the Monolith...
My God, it's full of stars ...

[Param]

Awesome! Though I want to see more land vehicles searching the the moons for potential life/water.

[Dave Lane]

The mars probe will get that going

[Param]

The mars probe will get that going

That is just one. Why not a lander on Titan or other moons with potential water?. I know we dropped Huygens, but the data was lost transmitting the pictures back. All we have is pictures of the descent and Huygens was a stationary lander.

[4th and Long]

That is just one. Why not a lander on Titan or other moons with potential water?. I know we dropped Huygens, but the data was lost transmitting the pictures back. All we have is pictures of the descent and Huygens was a stationary lander.
Actually, the data wasn't lost, per say, someone made a terrible error that kept Cassini from receiving the data. They forgot to flip on the receiver.

Why didn't the receiver work? The "Channel A" receiver was simply not turned on during the mission. "There's no mystery why it didn't turn on," says one scientist on the imaging team, who was upset by the loss. "The command was never sent to switch it on."

"That's an ESA responsibility," admits Southwood. Any instructions that need to be sent to the Cassini spacecraft are compiled as a series of software commands by mission scientists, and these are transmitted to the craft from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. All commands relating to the Huygens probe were programmed by ESA.

Southwood says it isn't important who omitted the crucial instruction, because the responsibility runs wider than that. The error should have been picked up during checks. ESA is now mounting an investigation into why the mistake was not spotted. "I'm extremely anxious to learn lessons from this," says Southwood.

WHOOPS!

Wonder if someone was on the unemployment line the next day?