Why no mission to IO?

Io is much more interesting than the cold and frozen Mars, so we should fly there?

Pablo Rena wrote:
Io is much more interesting than the cold and frozen Mars, so we
should fly there?

You might try over in sci.space.science for discussions of the
scientific aspects of such a mission, or sci.space.policy for the
policy (i.e. funding) aspects. That said, astronomers can be
interested in planets, too...


Basically, the "science policy" reason nobody's trying to fly to Io
is that to do significantly more science than Voyager and Galileo
have alrady done, would cost a fair bit of money. ESA is already
heavily committed elsewhere, and NASA is busy with boondogles like
a space station and sending astronauts to Mars.

The underlying technical problem is that to do this "next generation"
science probably requires entering an orbit around the Jupiter moon.
But all the interesting Jupiter moons are deep in Jupiter's gravity
well, so (even after you get to Jupiter, which isn't cheap in itself)
it takes a *lot* of delta-V to enter an orbit get to them == a lot
of rocket fuel == a massive spacecraft == an expensive launch.

That said, NASA does have some plans for a Europa orbiter. This would
indeed cost a fair bit of money for a science mission, and the earliest
it might fly would be about a decade from now. The current plans are
for a nuclear-electric propulsion system to get the needed delta-V
with a smaller/cheaper spacecraft. See
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/
for more info.

ciao,

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[Let me add just one point]
"JT" == Jonathan Thornburg writes:

JT Pablo Rena wrote:
Io is much more interesting than the cold and frozen Mars, so we
should fly there?

[...]
JT The underlying technical problem is that to do this "next
JT generation" science probably requires entering an orbit around the
JT Jupiter moon. But all the interesting Jupiter moons are deep in
JT Jupiter's gravity well, so (...) it takes a *lot* of delta-V to
JT enter an orbit get to them == a lot of rocket fuel == a massive
JT spacecraft == an expensive launch.

Moreover, Io is deep within Jupiter's magnetosphere. That means that
any probe would be exposed to a high level of particle bombardment,
which makes it difficult to keep the electronics functional.

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On Mon, 31 May 2004 08:34:54 GMT, (Pablo Rena)
wrote:

Io is much more interesting than the cold and frozen Mars, so we should fly there?

Because Io almost certainly has no water and hasn't since its earliest
days. NTM it's much further away.

Dan, ad nauseam