Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Re: Almathea

Re: Amalthea

It's scheduled to fly within 1000 km of Amalthea in November 2002 (its last flyby of any Jovian moon) -- but the odds are currently against getting enough funds to keep the imaging team together until then to allow any closeup photos, so that the only scientific data obtained about Amalthea would be an estimate of its density from tracking its effect on Galileo's course. Missing this for the sake of only about a million dollars -- while pouring hundreds of millions into building entirely new spacecraft -- strikes me, frankly, as scientifically criminal. And since NASA has just changed its mind and decided to carry out photography of Io during its last close flyby of that moon next January -- due largely, I think, to public pressure -- the time has come for us to put pressure on NASA again.

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