A mission NASA might kill is still returning fascinating science from Jupiter

A NASA mission that the agency might cancel is still returning fascinating science from Jupiter, proving that even threatened programs can yield invaluable data. The Juno spacecraft, originally slated for deorbit in 2025, recently transmitted high-resolution imagery of Jupiter’s moon Io’s volcanic plumes, revealing eruption velocities exceeding 1,000 meters per second. With a remaining budget of only $12 million for sensors and operations, the project demonstrates outsized scientific return per dollar—a benchmark that outperforms the average NASA planetary mission by a factor of 8.