The looping eccentric orbit was desirable for other reasons however.
For one, with the antenna cramp, the data rate was abysmally slow, having the craft loiter and send what dribble back it could helped.
They never tried it with Galileo (haven't heard why either) but an inclined orbit would have greatly reduced the overall radiation dose. The craft on it's way there now will have a steeply inclined orbit, but the on board camera is an extremely wide angle model (for other good reasons) and so don't be expecting much in the way of satellite pictures unless it gets VERY close to one. It will get great shots of Jupiter's polar regions.
An additional camera with the resolution of the one on NH would have been a really neat upgrade. The NH camera has ~16 pixels of resolution for every pixel the Voyager cameras had (1 arc second vs 4)
There is no shortage of cool stuff that could be flown, the hangup is the $$$.
Something very similar to NH in a 300-400 day orbit around Neptune would be a great, relatively cheap mission, and it could potentially orbit Neptune for decades. (It's desirable to have long term missions on targets that potentially show long term variations)
For one, with the antenna cramp, the data rate was abysmally slow, having the craft loiter and send what dribble back it could helped.
They never tried it with Galileo (haven't heard why either) but an inclined orbit would have greatly reduced the overall radiation dose. The craft on it's way there now will have a steeply inclined orbit, but the on board camera is an extremely wide angle model (for other good reasons) and so don't be expecting much in the way of satellite pictures unless it gets VERY close to one. It will get great shots of Jupiter's polar regions.
An additional camera with the resolution of the one on NH would have been a really neat upgrade. The NH camera has ~16 pixels of resolution for every pixel the Voyager cameras had (1 arc second vs 4)
There is no shortage of cool stuff that could be flown, the hangup is the $$$.
Something very similar to NH in a 300-400 day orbit around Neptune would be a great, relatively cheap mission, and it could potentially orbit Neptune for decades. (It's desirable to have long term missions on targets that potentially show long term variations)
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
