Galileo - if the HGA had worked.

Apart from incidentals, like tape recorder problems and DSN time being
less of a pain, what extra would have been gotten?

Would RCS consumption with the more accurate pointing shorten the
mission?

The obvious would be more images, and higher resolution fields and
particles.
Is there anything that simply has not been possible through the LGA?

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | | Ian Stirling.---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------All I want is a warm bed, a kind word and unlimited power -- Ashleigh Brilliant.

In article ,
Ian Stirling wrote:
Apart from incidentals, like tape recorder problems and DSN time being
less of a pain, what extra would have been gotten?

Basically, a lot more imaging. Lots of medium-scale images of the moons,
to supply context for the high-res images, and do surveys and mapping.
Lots and lots of images of Jupiter itself, for the people trying to
understand its atmosphere.

Most of the non-imaging instruments had much more modest data rates.
Even there, though, there would have been improvement, because I think
they ended up being somewhat selective about when those instruments took
data, and with a functioning HGA they'd have been on continuously. As it
was, my impression is there was no great loss to known major areas of
investigation, but there was a lot less "let's just leave those on and
see if they turn up anything interesting" data. It's possible, even
probable, that we missed a few surprises -- oddities in places where we
weren't expecting them -- which will have to be found by later missions.

Would RCS consumption with the more accurate pointing shorten the
mission?

Not significantly, I don't think. They still needed fairly accurate
attitude control for science data calibration; I don't think it was
practical to loosen it up much. Galileo's half-spinning design meant
that it didn't use a lot of fuel for attitude control.

Is there anything that simply has not been possible through the LGA?

The big losers were the Jovian-atmosphere people. When the press releases
say that Galileo got 80% of its expected science, that doesn't mean that
everybody got 80% of what they wanted -- it means that some people got
close to 100%, some got maybe 30%, and some got almost nothing.

Much of the expected data from the moon encounters, we got, but those long
quiet periods between encounters were originally supposed to be full of
Jupiter observations. Instead, they were full of playback of recorded
encounter data.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

So in short Galileo became a not-Jupiter-but the-stuff-around-Jupiter mission.

Is a Jupiter polar orbiter still on the books?

In article ,
Richard Schumacher wrote:
Is a Jupiter polar orbiter still on the books?

There is talk of it -- I think proposals along those lines have showed up
in Discovery competitions a couple of times -- but unless I've missed
something, there is no actual plan for it at this time.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

Henry Spencer wrote:

There is talk of it -- I think proposals along those lines have showed up
in Discovery competitions a couple of times

Yes, as least one, the solar-powered "INSIDE Jupiter" mission concept,

http://insidejupiter.lpl.arizona.edu/

was submitted a couple of times for Discovery and, in fact, made it to
the Phase A Concept Study stage in the previous cycle when Dawn and
Kepler were ultimately selected.

-- but unless I've missed
something, there is no actual plan for it at this time.

NASA is, however, soliciting proposals that might, among four types,
include a "Jupiter Polar with Probes" (JPOP) in the New Frontiers
Program 2003 and Missions of Opportunity AO that was released last
Friday, October 10th.

See
http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_s/n...ain.html#2.1.4

--


Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii