I think it's a bummer that they lost the chance to collect more data on Io from the closest pass yet.

Like James, I don't see the point of the topic title. Safemode is a known status that a spacecraft adopts when it encounters a problem it can't handle autonomously. The engineers at JPL will diagnose the problem and coax the spacecraft back out of safemode. It will probably plunge into Jupiter in 2003 just as planned.