[Sixstrings]

NASA has released an interesting video timelapse, showing the camera view approaching Jupiter and its moon system.

Caption in the video, "for humanity, our first glimpse of celestial harmonic motion:"

Juno Approach Movie of Jupiter and the Galilean Moons
https://youtu.be/XpsQimYhNkA

[Sixstrings]

Did anyone watch the above video? It's the first time human eyes have seen camera footage of a multiple moon system in motion (in time lapse), from a spacecraft approaching the system.

NASA's Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter's orbit

The arrival at Jupiter was dramatic. As Juno approached its target, it fired its rocket engine to slow itself down and gently slipped into orbit. Because of the communication time lag between Jupiter and Earth, Juno was on autopilot when it executed the daring move. ...

Scientists have promised close-up views of the planet when Juno skims the cloud tops during the 20-month, $1.1 billion mission.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/07/05/nasas-juno-spacecraft-enters-jupiters-orbit.html

Jupiter Has a New Moon. And We Put It There.
We now have a working spacecraft orbiting the mightiest planet in the solar system.

Google made this doodle celebrating Juno's arrival at Jupiter.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/07/05/juno_enters_jupiter_orbit.html

The Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter has a Lego crew on board


http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/6/12105878/nasa-juno-mission-aluminum-lego-figures-jupiter

How Juno arrived at Jupiter only 1 second off schedule
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2016/07/06/how-juno-arrived-jupiter-one-second-off-schedule/86745128/

Some random facts:

* Jupiter has 67 moons
* NASA plans to burn the probe up in the atmosphere over the pole, at the end of the mission, to avoid the possibility of colliding with Europa and contaminating it with microbes from Earth.

Europa is considered the most likely place to have life, in the solar system.

Artist's concept of Europa's surface:



(geysers on Europa; Europa has more ocean water than Earth, under a thick ice sheet. The ice sheet shields from radiation.. there may well be life in Europa's oceans. The BIG Jupiter mission, one day, would be to land on Europa and get a drill down through the ice and submarine probe)

[Plantagenet]

ENJOY the JUNO probe----this will be the last big NASA planetary missions for a while. For some reason Obama isn't a big fan of NASA and the cuts he made in NASA's budget starting 7 years ago mean that there aren't any other big missions in the pipeline now.

It takes years and years to plan the missions and organize the science research team and physically build the spaceship---and with this mission NASA has used up all the planetary science missions they had gotten started before Obama took office and cut the budget.

The next big planetary mission may be well 10 years way. A mission to Jupiter's moon Europa might happen sometime in the 2020s.....assuming the next President puts some more money in NASA's budget.

[Lore]

Yeah, the would be President Trump isn't a big fan of science either. So, I have to agree with Plant. Space exploration will have to be left up to some extraterrestrial civilization.

[Synapsid]

Plantagenet,

I'm a little confused here. Last I looked Congress controls NASA's budget, and I don't believe Congress has been paying much attention to what Obama wants or doesn't want.

Can you clarify?

[Subjectivist]

Plantagenet,

I'm a little confused here. Last I looked Congress controls NASA's budget, and I don't believe Congress has been paying much attention to what Obama wants or doesn't want.

Can you clarify?

The first 2 years of the Obama Administration Congress was Democrat controlled, then for the next 4 years they did not pass a budget, just continuing resolutions to repeat the budget from the second year, so the NASA cuts stayed in place for six years. Increases in the last year are stuck in committee.

[Plantagenet]

I'm a little confused here....

I don't have time to explain the budget process to you, but in practice the final budget is a compromise between what the Congress wants and what the president will accept. The President sends a budget proposal to congress every year. Congress changes it, of course, and then it goes back to the President. If the president doesn't like the budget he vetoes (or threatens to veto it) until the Congress comes up with a budget is acceptable to him. Thus it is very wrong to imagine that the budget has nothing to do with the President.

Obama operates the same as past presidents when it comes to the budget. He has already vetoed several budgets to force the Congress to make changes so he can accept the budget or to add money to Obamacare, etc.. This is his last budget---lets just hope Obama doesn't get it in his head to veto the budget to force Congress to cut NASA. Because when it comes to the NASA budget, For some reason Obama has in for NASA---the Obama administration has been pushing cuts in the NASA budget for years and Congress has been adding money back in. I'll repeat that since most people don't know thiat---- NASA would've been cut more already, but the Congress has been putting more money back into NASA then Obama asks for.

For instance check out the President's 2017 budget---Obama wants huge cuts for NASA---basically wiping out the "exploration" budget at NASA that goes to fund missions like Juno, including future Mars missions and Europa missions.

"The Obama Administration has announced its new Federal budget and is proposing to cut NASA’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget to $19 billion by carving away significant funding for deep space exploration, whereas the overall US Federal budget actually increases to over $4.1 trillion.

This 2017 budget request amounts to almost $300 million less than the recently enacted NASA budget for 2016 and specifically stipulates deep funding cuts for deep space exploration programs involving both humans and robots, during President Obama’s final year in office.

The 2017 budget proposal would slash funding to the very programs designed to expand the frontiers of human knowledge and aimed at propelling humans outward to the Red Planet and robots to a Jovian moon that might be conducive to the formation of life.

Absent sufficient and reliable funding to keep NASA’s exploration endeavors on track, further launch delays are almost certainly inevitable – thereby fraying American leadership in space and science.

The Obama administration is specifying big funding cuts to the ongoing development of NASA’s mammoth Space Launch System (SLS) heavy lift rocket and the state of the art Orion deep space crew capsule. They are the essential first ingredients to carry out NASA’s ambitious plans to send astronauts on deep space ‘Journey to Mars’ expeditions during the 2030s.

The overall Exploration Systems Development account for human deep space missions would be slashed about 18 percent from the 2016 funding level; from $4.0 Billion to only $3.3 Billion, or nearly $700 million.

SLS alone is reduced the most by $700 million from $2.0 billion to $1,31 billion, or a whopping 35 percent loss. Orion is reduced from $1.27 billion to $1.12 billion for a loss of some $150 million.

Make no mistake. These programs are already starved for funding and the Obama administration tried to force similar cuts to these programs in 2016, until Congress intervened."

nasa-2017-obama-proposal-cuts-budget

CHEERS!

[Sixstrings]

A couple JPL videos:

Jupiter: Into the Unknown (NASA Juno Mission Trailer)

"It's a monster. It's unforgiving. It's relentless. Deep inside are the secrets we're after, the secrets of our early solar system.

It's the biggest, baddest planet in the solar system. The biggest baddest radiation, the biggest baddest magnetic field. No spacecraft has ever flown so close to Jupiter, and this deep into the radiation belts."
https://youtu.be/SgEsf4QcR0Q

This was earlier in the Juno mission, at some point it did a flyby of Earth to pick up speed to gravitational slingshot further out.. they had the camera do a timelapse of the Earth / moon flyby:

Juno Flies by Earth and Moon
https://youtu.be/uyjNBdbi_Ck?t=14

24/7 simulation livestream link, showing Juno's position in the Jupiter system:

NASA JUNO / Jupiter Real Time Simulation : Now In Elliptical Orbit - Follow its journey
https://youtu.be/0Uayu5LvdTk

[Sixstrings]

ENJOY the JUNO probe----this will be the last big NASA planetary missions for a while. For some reason Obama isn't a big fan of NASA and the cuts he made in NASA's budget starting 7 years ago mean that there aren't any other big missions in the pipeline now.

Did the sequester that cut the military, also cut NASA?

About the O administration overall -- yep, they have not been big proponents of NASA. The one thing that worked out though, was the idea of outsourcing to some private industry. So that helped SpaceX, a massive success.

But, NASA should still be doing hard science and big things, and Obama admin and this administration's leadership of NASA just hasn't been interested (remember folks, it's the executive branch that appoints the NASA commissioner).

The Spacex and other private industry stuff is exciting.. would be nice if government would throw MORE money at that.

But it's sad, that the USA lost its way on the big things.

HW Bush was a proponent of space development; he originally wanted several moon bases, and several space stations. It all got progressively cut more and more in Congress, until all was left was just one space station -- and then broken down to international, various nations doing modules for it.

It was originally supposed to be a network of American space stations. (ISS worked out well, but the point is that.. the big things stopped.. like Apollo. The US never went back to the moon. Never established a base. Never got a man to Mars.)

Congress, and their short sightedness. Always cutting NASA, and never interested in it.

And then, Democrats hijack NASA to make it all about climate change. It's supposed to be full-on Buck Rogers "the final frontier" exploration agency, it's not the Climate Change Agency. The latter is all well and good, but they shouldn't toss out all other science and NASA's original mission.

It takes years and years to plan the missions and organize the science research team and physically build the spaceship---and with this mission NASA has used up all the planetary science missions they had gotten started before Obama took office and cut the budget.

So is this really all O's fault? W. Bush admin was funding it, then O stopped it all?

One thing about the Bush family -- they carried on Reagan's commitment to space. A legacy of John Kennedy, too.

The next big planetary mission may be well 10 years way.

I wonder what's the latest on the Mars mission. Far as I know, it gets cut down / canceled / postponed, over and over.

Thank goodness for Elon Musk, that somebody is doing something. They'd do well to just give him HALF of NASA's budget, that's a guy that wants to get somewhere in his lifetime, he'd get ten times the bang for the buck.

Assuming the next President puts some more money in NASA's budget.

Everyone should be supportive of NASA funding. In my opinion, anyone that's at all concerned about the environment and climate change, should also be half as much for space development. Long term, humanity has to keep the bottleneck as clean as possible and save it -- but also be working to get out of the bottleneck.

Bottom line -- with better leadership at the top, and with more funding, NASA could be doing so much more.

But certainly the individual teams deserve credit, like JPL, for what has been done. These last three things were perfect.. Mars rovers, then Pluto, now Jupiter. If they don't get the funding they need and more big bold projects approved, then all that talent and experience currently built up, will be lost.

[Sixstrings]

NASA's budget has been cut more and more, over time:



And then with climate change stuff added in, that's like unfunded mandate.. adding more things, while cutting the funding, that's an effective cut from both ends.

I'm not against the climate change things -- but that should have had the funding added with it.

NASA's current budget is only $19 billion. The Department of Commerce doesn't even do anything, yet it's got half that budget.

To compare that to something else in the budget -- the F-35 alone cost $1.5 trillion to develop (some of that paid by allies, and I don't know the breakdown but at least a trillion of that was probably the US).

How DOD’s $1.5 Trillion F-35 Broke the Air Force
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-broke-the-air-force.html

$1.5 trillion is like 1,500 billion. So compare 19 to 1,500. 19 is NOTHING.

The total annual US military budget is $601 billion.

In my opinion -- obviously NASA should stop being cut, and also no more climate change or other things added on without funding for it, and then lastly it ought to have its budget doubled to at least $40 billion.

Egyptians built the pyramids.. the Greeks and Romans did their thing.. the Spanish Empire discovered the New World and led the development of it.. and America is supposed to be in space, leading the way and branching out into the final frontier.

This is one of the big things the US still has a lead on, versus China and India and the other new rising powers of the future. It would be smart to start mining that helium 3 on the moon, before the Chinese.

[ennui2]

NASA's days are numbered. The future of space is private-industry (think SpaceX and Blue Origin).

Why waste all this money with the Mars program when Musk will probably get there first, for instance? It's a fruitless duplication of effort. Constellation is really just Apollo warmed over. It's more of a step back than a step forward.

If NASA phased out its manned program then maybe it would have more money leftover for space probes and telescopes.

But no, let's not look at it in this much detail because we can just throw up our hands and bash Obama for not doing enough for NASA ( despite the fact NASA scored a win with Juno.) Just more mindless ODS Idiocy.

[Sixstrings]

Why waste all this money

Well first of all, it's not a lot of money. $19 billion is nothing. Russia spent $40 billion just on their Olympics.

The entire federal budget is 3,800 billion. 19 of 3,800 is literally nothing.

with the Mars program when Musk will probably get there first, for instance?

SpaceX is exciting / promising, but it's no NASA or what NASA could / can be -- SpaceX is a satellite launching business. But I would agree certainly with government grants to SpaceX, throw them $5 billion a year and you betcha Musk could get a Mars base set up.

The main thing, Ennui, is that government is best at building the INFRASTRUCTURE for private business to then grow on. Things that are otherwise too long return on investment, for business.

Government funded the railroads, in the 1800s. Government built the interstate highways, in the 1950s. Government developed the internet.

Space development is the same thing -- the federal government should be putting a lot of money into it, looking at it as investment in the long term future, for the whole country. It's just like Spain and the New World -- Ferdinand and Isabella reaped centuries of rewards for Spain, because of their early commitment to the New World.

The future is in space, Ennui. It's on Europa. It's in orbital colonies, a Mars colony, and moon and asteroid mining.

Should the USA go for it and maintain its status as the leading nation in the world, or should we sit back and let China get there first?

If NASA phased out its manned program then maybe it would have more money leftover for space probes and telescopes.

Manned missions can't be phased out, because the entire point is to get bases (profitable one day, helium 3 mining and fusion power and such) and then colonies set up.

If you care about climate change, then it's important to make these early big investments to get humanity into space. I realize it may sound silly to you -- but Columbus was called mad too, back in 1492. Queen Isabella took a chance on him.

But no, let's not look at it in this much detail because we can just throw up our hands and bash Obama for not doing enough for NASA ( despite the fact NASA scored a win with Juno.)

Well as far as I'm concerned, I *did* in fact say that private public partnership Obama admin did was a good thing -- that enabled Spacex's success.

But it's just that it shouldn't be ALL nasa is doing. There is no private company that can build the infrastructure for space development.

And on pure science -- things like the James Webb telescope, no private company is ever going to do that pure science.

This juno probe is a success so far, but there should be TWENTY of those going on right now. The thing only cost $1 billion.

There should have already been a major Europa mission by now, too.

Money spent on space stuff is NEVER a waste -- every dollar of that spins off to the private sector, in tech advances.

[Sixstrings]

Long story short, I'm just saying --

* I think NASA's budget should be tripled, to $60 billion. Cut the military to find the money; let the allies defend themselves more, and the US could start investing in a growth-based future (in space, and all the tech that will come from that) versus us just being this global cop country that's gotta sit on everybody's border to defend them. That is a losing business for us to be in, long term, I think.

Eventually China's just gonna take over anyway. We're like the British Empire was -- but to not go extinct, we should look to the future and pour money into it so the USA stays #1.

* There should be at least $20 billion in the budget, annually, every year -- for science probes and rovers and space telescopes and all that. This is just one of the best things our government does, with money, just a contribution to humanity in general and the future.

And, it's just cool, is it not? No other country in the world can, or is willing to do these things -- but the US can, and does.

My argument is we should stop cutting the budget for it, and do MORE of it. European Space Agency does a few neat things, but far less than NASA.. because they don't put the money in.. their budget is only $5 billion.

China and India are very keen to do more in space -- but they've got a tech gap. They've got to repeat the whole 1960s, over there. China is so interested in it though, as a source of national pride, and yes they really do want to mine helium 3 on the moon -- that we should be taking that seriously, and get serious about the competition while we can still be ahead.

All science funding in general, is good -- things like the large haldron collider, that Europe did, etc.

I'm just saying, triple that NASA budget. To $60 billion.

1/3 for probes and rover and telescopes.. 1/3 of the money going to public private partnerships, like Spacex and Blue Origin and new ones.. and also the climate change stuff / earth based sciences nasa does. And then leave a solid 1/3 -- $20 billion annually -- for manned missions and a moon base and Mars base.

NASA has a lot of great plans, actually.. they just need the FUNDING.

They've already got the plans -- lots of stuff about exoplanets. They've even got a warp drive theory team, that's already made progress. The very longterm interest / goal really is getting out to an exoplanet -- a whole other Earth.

The stepping stones to all of that though, are those first steps.. orbital colonies, and the steps to get to that, it's gonna take work and doing and learning but they'd figure it out. And then, living on the moon and Mars. And then, manned missions to as far away as Jupiter.

All I'm saying here is triple NASA's budget. They could find the money, even $60 billion is not a lot, if something is a national priority for the future, just as the Apollo missions were and "manifest destiny" was, in the 1800s.

[Plantagenet]

Did the sequester that cut the military, also cut NASA?

Yes. Obama and Congress agreed in 2011 to the sequester. The sequester exempts some things (social security, military salaries, etc. ) but both NASA and the Military were impacted by the sequester.

The weird thing is the sequester is now over so the rest of the federal budget is growing rapidly, --- but Obama still wants the cut NASA spending. O's 2017 budget called for big cuts in NASA in 2017.

Bottom line -- with better leadership at the top, and with more funding, NASA could be doing so much more.

But certainly the individual teams deserve credit, like JPL, for what has been done. These last three things were perfect.. Mars rovers, then Pluto, now Jupiter. If they don't get the funding they need and more big bold projects approved, then all that talent and experience currently built up, will be lost.

Hopefully Congress will put reject O's budget cuts and put the money back into NASA, the way they did last year when Obama also proposed large cuts to the NASA budget.

Cheers!


Obama wants big budget cuts that will cripple NASA's space exploration program

[Sixstrings]

My proposal of $60 billion is a bit much I suppose ( ) / we gotta have that $600 billion for the military, they really couldn't cut that by as much as $40 billion.

But they could find another $20 billion anyway, at least, that nasa budget should be $40 billion and not $20 billion.

To just accelerate all these things in the works.

Assuming the $19 billion budget isn't further cut / Mars mission postponed and canceled more.. then as it stands, the Mars mission will be "in the 2030s."

The most powerful rocket ever built
NASA's Space Launch System, designed to carry astronauts on deep space missions, underwent its final ground test last week.
https://youtu.be/Oai8BwWykRw

[Sixstrings]

This is what Plant was saying:

Juno was a success—but there is precious little coming after it
Advisor claims Obama "revitalized" planetary science, but the opposite is true.

But the party is just about over. NASA, and more particularly the Obama administration, have failed to invest in future planetary science missions. ...

All of the stunning successes of the planetary exploration program, from Curiosity landing on Mars to New Horizons visiting Pluto, were planned and largely executed before Obama became president. He could have furthered these programs by continuing robust funding for a Mars sample return mission in the 2020s (which now may not happen), more fully embracing a Europa mission that Congress has aggressively pushed, and supporting ambitious ideas such as a lander for Titan's methane lakes. ...

"Now the Obama legacy is, unfortunately, going to be that NASA’s presence in the Solar System is going to be diminished, particularly in the outer Solar System," Dreier said. "When Obama leaves office, every mission in the outer Solar System except for New Horizons will be ending in 2017. Juno, Cassini—those are done in 2017. Dawn ends, too. New Horizons is way out in the Kuiper belt. And that’s it. It’s the first time the United States hasn’t had a presence in the outer Solar System since 1972 when they launched Pioneer 10."
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/white-house-tries-to-take-credit-for-planetary-programs-it-gutted/

I think Plant was right, folks. If you don't believe Plant, then just read that arstechnica article, "white house tries to take credit for programs it gutted."

All these great things were planned out during the Bush administration-led NASA. Now that's it, no more.

It's a darn shame -- there's so much science on the cusp of getting done, the US has the tech and experience and teams like JPL to do it, but now it will just go all to waste.

Democrats are really bad at some things -- and NASA is one of them.

It's one of the few things I didn't like about Bernie Sanders -- he's not interested in space, at all. He just says there are bigger priorities. And Trump says the same thing too, he's just not interested in it.

But when you look at the actual cost of these things, and when you know what the federal budget is and you know that the military budget alone is $601 billion -- then the reality is that the $19 billion for NASA is nothing. It's money very well spent, for practically pennies.

Worse than budget cuts, it's actually just poor leadership and not greenlighting new projects that's to blame -- I think maybe what happened here, is Obama admin changed NASA's focus to "climate change" and "earth science" and projects to just stare back at the earth.

I don't know more details, but I almost wonder if it's really like he's just not interested in space and he just used the NASA budget to give money to green stuff so he can just say he's doing something about climate change, and then probably a bunch of other random things that all added up have nothing to do with what NASA is supposed to be.

It's really a darn shame -- this is ONE issue anyway, that a President McCain or Romney would have been very different on. And unfortunately Trump is like a Democrat on this, Trump is simply not interested in space.

ESTABLISHMENT Republicans though, have always been good on it. Reagan, HW Bush, W. Bush.

the planetary science comments contain the biggest exaggeration of all. Holdren claims the scaling back of Constellation allowed NASA to spend more on things like planetary science and robotic exploration.

However, consider the president's budget request in 2013, which was made even as Obama was basking in the glow of Curiosity's landing on Mars. His proposal cut the budget for planetary science from $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2012 to $1.2 billion in FY 2013, and down further to $1.1 billion in FY 2014 and 2015.

It is hard to see how these large cuts, which explicitly precluded flagship missions like Curiosity, "revitalized" planetary science. ...

Congress has increased funding for planetary science In the years since. This has included forcing the administration to start work on a daring mission to land on Europa and to begin developing an "ocean worlds" exploration program to similarly visit Enceladus, Titan, and other outer Solar System worlds with liquid oceans.

This is not to say that Congress has been a stalwart ally for NASA. Some members have larded the agency's budget with pork, especially where it comes to the Space Launch System rocket. In truth, neither Congress nor the president have been particularly effective stewards of NASA and its budget over the last eight years.

It is, of course, no surprise that politicians will play at spin and historical revisionism—but it's disappointing when scientists like Holdren do it.

There's some blame to around on both sides, but this issue is like a park in your town that's just falling apart and decrepit, and R's and D's on the city council just blame each other. And the park just falls apart even more.

In my opinion, NASA is a national treasure like the national parks are -- BOTH political parties need to fix it. Get the pork out of it. Let scientists be in charge of it, give the scientists these relative "pennies" of the budget and let them do the best science, without politics.

[vox_mundi]

"My God, it's full of stars!" ...

NASA to reveal 'surprising' activity on Jupiter's moon Europa

There's something going on beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa. But what?

NASA teased a "surprising" announcement for Monday, based on Hubble Space Telescope images of the celestial body, which many experts believe could contain a subsurface ocean, even possibly some form of life.

The US space agency has already proclaimed that Europa has "strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its crust and which could host conditions favorable for life."

At Monday's announcement, "astronomers will present results from a unique Europa observing campaign that resulted in surprising evidence of activity that may be related to the presence of a subsurface ocean," it said in a statement.

The announcement will be made at a news conference at 2 pm (1800 GMT) Monday featuring Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, and William Sparks, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

... Last year, data from the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, has an underground ocean that contains more water than Earth's, broadening the hunt for places in the solar system where life might be able to exist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_(film)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzNu9wUO-YM