Yup. It turns out no one thought about vacuum degradation of the material used in the moving parts making up the thruster valves. And it was a five year trip to Jupiter in the hardest of hard vacuums.
That is indeed what happened. Lockheed made the spacecraft, but stern looks are pretty cool, don't let me keep you from giving some out. I take it you don't work on the pre-launch side of things, then. The QA and red tape have grown into a bureaucratic nightmare, and although Juno is only one example, I'd wager that the return on the investment into all the additional oversight is right around nothing. I'm so glad to be done with that phase of my project (MMS). Is this geeking out? Do we tag kleinbl00 yet?
Currently, I don't have time to put together any insight more thorough than what you could find by googling. I'll be looking at all that stuff in about a year or so from now, but until then, my singular focus is publishing my own papers. SoooOO0oOoO0o... did you ever sell your soul to a graduate school?What's your take on the findings so far with Jupiter?
Just do me a solid and be sure to tag me whenever y'all geek out.