Talk:1703: Juno

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 16:34, 6 July 2016 by 108.162.246.73 (talk)
Jump to: navigation, search

According to http://www.space.com/18383-how-far-away-is-jupiter.html it is about 600 million miles to Jupiter, and according to http://www.space.com/18477-how-far-away-is-saturn.html it is about 1.7 billion miles to Saturn. So they went the distance to Saturn but ended up in Jupiter. They must have gone i pretty long circles to go 1.7 billion miles to get 600 million miles away. Aquaplanet (talk) 14:46, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

That's 1.7 billion kilometers. They lost the Mars Climate Orbiter that way. .42 (talk) 15:38, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Actually, the space.com website does say Saturn is 1.7 billion miles away at its furthest, just as Jupiter is 600 million miles at its furthest. In either case, interplanetary travel isn't a matter of taking the shortest route. Yes, Juno went 1.7 billion miles to go to Jupiter (anywhere from 365 million to 600 million miles away, currently 370 million according to Google), because it was the easiest / most cost effective (in terms of fuel) way to get there. --Mr. I (talk) 15:47, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Jupiter is actually 872 million km away right now, which just happens to be roughly the current distance to Saturn if kilometers are confused with miles. .42 (talk) 16:18, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Of course anyone who has bought a used car off Autotrader will know that how far away something is doesn't necessarily correlate particularly well to how far you have to go to get there 141.101.98.59 14:57, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Several sources have reported that Juno arrived at its Jupiter orbit 1 second off schedule http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2016/07/06/how-juno-arrived-jupiter-one-second-off-schedule/86745128/. --108.162.221.13 15:33, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

I was going to come here to ask "Did they really make it within one second? And how do they decide when it is 'in orbit'?", but in that article is a quote "We hit our burn targets within one second" which makes sense - 'in orbit' starts when the engines turn off for the last course correction.