A thump and the crowd goes wild!
After traveling 1.7 billion miles that began five years ago, Juno successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit to begin using its nine science instruments. This is the farthest a solar-powered spacecraft has traveled. It broke the record, which was held by the European Space Agency’s comet-chasing Rosetta mission, which traveled 492 million miles. Since it was European, I should say 792 million kilometers (instead of miles).
This mission has cost to date $1.1 billion, however if you break it down into dollars per mile, it only comes out to about $1.50 per mile. I’m not sure, but I think Uber/Lyft charges more than that. I don’t know what it would be it if I tried to calculate euros per kilometer. I’m still not sure why England voted to leave the EU, but that’s a topic for another article.
I listened for a bit yesterday to NASA’s press conference, which was online. Head researcher, Scott Bolton said the tone after Juno sent to let NASA scientists know that it reached orbit would be “music to my ears”. I wanted to know what this tone would sound like, so I found a video on Space.com’s website (http://www.space.com/33343-nasa-juno-spacecraft-arrives-jupiter.html) and at 29 seconds into the video you hear a “thump” and the scientists cheer. For $1.1 billion I expected to hear something out of “2001: A Space Odyssey” like: “Hal, I’m now in orbit”.
I’m just glad that Lockheed Martin and the University of Colorado who formed a very dedicated team were part of this mission. Having a Colorado company with its’ dedicated individuals and a Colorado university involved is “music to my ears”.
Can anyone tell me how I can get my hands on one of those cool “Mission Juno” polo shirts?
