NASA’s Juno spacecraft has finally made it all the way to Jupiter.
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So, Google thought it’d mark the historic feat by coming up with a little animation of NASA staff cheering as Juno beams back celebratory emojis.
An American spacecraft has gone where no man has gone before.
The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is a huge ball of gas 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive than our planet.
Although the NASA craft was launched nearly five years ago, its scientific mission is just beginning. The milestone came late Monday, as the robotic probe fired its main engine to slow the craft down enough to be caught by the gas giant’s powerful gravity.
In yet another remarkable achievement, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Juno spacecraft has successfully entered the orbit around Jupiter without being knocked down by the planet’s intense magnetic field and radiation. “Juno will help us to understand the formation of the solar system”, Gasparrini said.
“NASA did it again”, said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission.
Lockheed said Monday the probe reached Jupiter Monday evening after a 1.76-billion-mile journey in the last five years. Sunlight intensity at Jupiter is 25 times less than here on Earth.
Juno isn’t the first spacecraft sent to investigate the mysteries of Jupiter.
“Some of the views that we’re going to have by its visible-light camera will give us close-up views of Jupiter’s clouds, down to a resolution of maybe 15 kilometers, so that’s an incredible view of this planet which is many thousands of kilometers across”. The spacecraft will orbit the poles and will have to evade the radiation belts which are extremely hazardous. Since Jupiter was most likely the first planet formed in our solar system, figuring out how it was created will be key to “understanding the origins of our solar system”, the New York Times reports.
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While Juno’s solar array is quite large (overall spacecraft span is around 20 metres), the solar cells will collectively only generate an output of 500 watts given the distance Juno is from the sun. Juno is created to pass very close to learn more about Jupiter’s magnetic fields, radiation and gravity, it’ll also peer down under the clouds to work out how much water the planet may hold.
