My psychology is different than most of the movie going public. This trailer, about NASA's upcoming Jupiter mission, has been touted as a great breakthrough in NASA public relations. Good Hollywood appeal, but for me, it just adds to my anxiety level.
It stresses the dangers of going into orbit, at Jupiter, with the radiation belts and so forth. Like The Terminator, or something. Action, suspense, scary. On the edge of one's seat. Personally, I hope it's not that risky. I'm looking forward to some real interesting pictures and findings if (which I hope is likely) the mission succeeds. July 4th is the date that Juno goes into orbit around Jupiter.
I feel odd doubting information that NASA has provided, in this trailer, but it does say that no other spacecraft has gone as close to Jupiter's treacherous environs as Juno is planning to do. Well, I remember the last orbiter of Jupiter named Galileo. It included a probe that plunged right into Jupiter's atmosphere and worked okay regardless of the radiation belts. It worked till being crushed, as planned, by the inevitable pressures of falling into Jupiter's atmosphere. We got good data out of that and the orbiter continued for many years after. Galileo had one handicap that Juno doesn't have to deal with. A malfunctioning antenna on the Galileo Probe required lots of slow workarounds for sending data back to Earth. Luckily, that mission lasted so long (bonus time well beyond it's design date) that it was able to accomplish it's goals in spite of the slow data link. Galileo was somewhat crippled even from the start, but Juno is (as far as I know) in excellent shape.
Looking forward to (hopefully) smooth sailing for the Juno Spacecraft that's about to reach Jupiter on July 4.
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