r/technology 11h ago

Space Say Goodbye to Juno, NASA’s Groundbreaking Mission to Jupiter

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-nasas-juno-probe-changed-everything-we-know-about-jupiter/
244 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/_Moho_braccatus_ 5h ago

I know this was planned for a while, but why specifically shut Juno down now if it's still viable to use past it's mission date? Is it like with Cassini where they wanted to prevent contaminating the planet's moons?

5

u/Skylion007 4h ago

In short, yes. Also the electronics are risk of damage from Jupiter's strong magnetic fields and its elliptical orbit through them so better to crash it while the electronics are still functioning.