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Something Went Wrong with the Juno Spacecraft's Engine

posted by martyb on Monday October 17 2016, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the debugging-from-960-million-kilometers-away dept.

AnonTechie writes:

A critical moment in NASA'S Juno mission has been postponed while engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory attempt to sort out a mysterious engine issue. If the problem is not resolved quickly, it could reduce the amount of high-quality data the Jupiter-orbiting probe is able to collect during its scientific mission.

On October 19th, at its point of closest approach to Jupiter (called periapsis), the Juno spacecraft was scheduled to perform its final main engine burn, a "period reduction maneuver" that would narrow its orbit from 53.4 days to 2 weeks. Once in its "science orbit," the spacecraft's main data collection phase will commence.

But on Friday, the space agency decided to delay the burn due to an unexpected issue with a pair of helium valves that are part of the engine's fuel pressurization system. As Juno project manager Rick Nybakken said in a news release, these valves "did not operate as expected during a command sequence that was initiated [Thursday]."

"The valves should have opened in a few seconds, but it took several minutes," Nybakken continued. "We need to better understand this issue before moving forward with a burn of the main engine."

http://gizmodo.com/something-went-wrong-with-the-juno-spacecrafts-engine-1787873807

[Source]: NASA

More Info About Juno Mission

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 17 2016, @10:19PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday October 17 2016, @10:19PM (#415445) Journal

    Just look at the paper when it comes out in December.

    I think some of the findings of the December paper leaked out, but I will wait until its actual release to care. The paper could be revised by then.

    The quoted portion is just bad reporting. The original source for the 2.0 article is IB Times UK [ibtimes.co.uk] (and the patent application). Unfortunately, we have to take Roger Shawyer's word for it that governments are actually (still) interested in emdrive. He appears to have "suckered" in a legit company at least:

    However, he has confirmed that the company he is working with is none other than Gilo Industries Group, the inventors of the personal aviation paramotor vehicle Parajet Skycar, which famously flew TV survivalist Bear Grylls close to Mount Everest in 2007 and is now being developed as an all-terrain flying car. "Gilo Cardozo approached me. I confirm that we are in a joint venture. Universal Propulsion is the name of the joint venture and it's located in Dorset," said Shawyer.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2016, @03:05PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 18 2016, @03:05PM (#415694) Journal
    Currently, there's no evidence that the EM drive is anything other than inefficient light propulsion [sciencealert.com]. In which case, a series of fluorescent tubes would probably be more efficient propulsion.