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#1 2004-05-27 07:35:15
- Palomar
- Member
- From: USA
- Registered: 2002-05-30
- Posts: 9,734
Re: JIMO/Prometheus - ...It's "Go"
*This twin-topic has been raised before, but I can't (via Search) find an already-created specific thread suitable for it, so will create a new thread.
This is from space.com's "Astronotes" (column format and frequently updated, so must copy and paste).
This is fabulous news. 
But the article's writer includes *Callisto* as possibly harboring an ocean beneath its ice? Um...I don't think so (based on my reading, and I'll stand corrected). It has plenty of impact craters and etc., and ice...but I don't recall reading speculation it might have an ocean. :-\ Ganymede's pretty much in the same boat with Callisto...I'm currently scanning a few Google sites, to check myself on this.
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May 26
Industry Go-ahead on Prometheus Nuclear-powered Probe
NASA's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) moved closer to reality today as aerospace industry teams got their marching orders to design the mission.
To be launched next decade, the nuclear-powered JIMO would orbit three planet-sized moons of Jupiter -- Callisto, Ganymede and Europa - believed to harbor oceans beneath their icy surfaces.
NASA's new Office of Exploration Systems issued a request for proposals for JIMO to three previously qualified industry teams led by Boeing, Huntington Beach, Calif.; Lockheed Martin, Denver; and Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, Calif. The proposals are due July 16, 2004.
The Department of Energy's Office of Naval Reactors would be responsible for the reactor module.JIMO will demand revolutionary new technologies in spacecraft design. Top priority work centers on power conversion and heat rejection, electric propulsion, radiation hardened electronics and materials, and telecommunications.
There is five-to-eight year trip time for JIMO. Once on duty at Jupiter, the spacecraft would go from one moon to the next. The probe would not only fly by but orbit each moon. JIMO would be the first NASA mission utilizing nuclear electric propulsion, which would enable the spacecraft to orbit each of the trio of icy worlds to perform extensive studies of their makeup, history and potential for sustaining life.
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--Cindy
::EDIT::
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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