cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/45614563
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5763205
One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated.
A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they’d been providing had been “of exceptionally high quality.”
The observatories provide detailed carbon dioxide measurements across various locations, allowing scientists to get a detailed glimpse of how human activity is affecting greenhouse gas emissions.
(Ex NASA employee) David Crisp said it “makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data,” pointing out it costs only $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, a tiny fraction of the agency’s $25.4 billion budget.
It’s a fantastic idea, really clever. But I’m afraid it’s too late, it doesn’t have the necessary Delta-V. We could have tried it if we had planned the mission a month ago, but at this point we just can’t get there in time (We didn’t know its trajectory a month ago, so it’s a moot point). What it comes down to is this, to make a flyby it would need about 2.5k Delta V, Juno has about half that.
Also, we’re not confident Juno’s engines will light. We’ve previously refrained from using them for some planned manners because we recorded abnormalities the last time they were fired. There’s a decent chance engines would explode if used again.
If we want to be able to take advantage of this kind of situation in the future, we’ll need at least one of two things… More probes, just sitting around with more fuel to spare, or better detection abilities so we can find these objects with more time to get to them. I’m betting on the later approach.