Trwa śledztwo dotyczące anomalii silnika sondy.
Podejrzewa się , że podobny problem mógł dotknąć inną wersję silnika Leros zainstalowanego na Intelsat 33E. W tym przypadku wejście satelity na GEO jest opóźnione o kilka miesięcy.
Istnieje duże prawdopodobieństwo, że nie dojdzie do manewru zmniejszającego okres orbitalny Juno, zaplanowanego na 10 grudnia 2016.
Jeśli nie dojdzie w ogóle do redukcji okresu orbitalnego sondy to zostanie wykonanych mniej zbliżeń do Jowisza , a to oznacza mniejszą ilość zebranych danych naukowych.
NASA investigating possible link between Juno and Intelsat thruster problems
by Jeff Foust — November 3, 2016
[...]Green said one part of the investigation is studying any connection to a similar malfunctioning thruster. “It was made known to us that the rocket we currently have on Juno, the retrorocket that gets us into orbit, is in the same family as one that has been malfunctioning on the Intelsats,” he said.
He was referring to Intelsat 33e, a Boeing 702MP satellite launched in August. On Sept. 9, Intelsat announced that the spacecraft’s entry into service in geostationary orbit would be delayed from fourth quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017 because of a thruster malfunction. That model of satellite uses a Leros engine, manufactured by Moog, to raise its orbit after deployment.
While Juno uses a different version of the Leros engine than the one on Intelsat 33e, and launched five years earlier, Green said engineers were investigating whether there may be any links between the two. “Whenever that happens, we step back and take a good look at what we have, how it’s implemented, look at the failure modes for these similar things,” he said, “and then do an analysis on what we’re going to do next and what the probability is of what we have on our spacecraft failing.” [...]
http://spacenews.com/nasa-investigating-possible-link-between-juno-and-intelsat-thruster-problems/