“Tonight, 540 million miles away, Juno performed a precisely choreographed dance at blazing speeds with the largest, most intense planet in our solar system”, said Guy Beutelschies, director of Interplanetary Missions at Lockheed Martin Space Systems.
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From measuring water in the atmosphere to mapping Jupiter’s magnetic field and all the uncharted territory in between, the scientists shared what they most looked forward to finding out on the Juno mission.
The huge gravity exerted by Jupiter’s sheer size is thought to have helped shield Earth from bombardment by comets and asteroids.
We heard about you starting to orbit Jupiter after journeying for five years to study the planet. Jupiter is also important because it’s mostly made from two gases, hydrogen and helium, which are also present in our Sun.
The burn of Juno’s 645-Newton Leros-1b main engine began on time at 8:18 p.m. PDT (11:18 p.m. EDT), decreasing the spacecraft’s velocity by 1,212 miles per hour (542 meters per second) and allowing Juno to be captured in orbit around Jupiter.
Juno is the first NASA mission to send a solar-powered spacecraft to another region in the Solar System. “We’re very much an armored tank going to Jupiter”, says Bolton.
The fifth rock from the sun and the heftiest planet in the solar system, Jupiter is what’s known as a gas giant – a ball of hydrogen and helium – unlike rocky Earth and Mars.
So it was clever of Nasa to pack the spirit of Galileo in the space freight, just as the agency must have found it impossible to resist naming the orbiter after a classical figure.
Dr. Yen is scheduled to be a member of the team that will attack the ambitious Europa Mission, which is now scheduled to launch between 2022 and 2025 with hopes of landing on Jupiter three years later.
Juno and its science instruments. It stayed on for 35 minutes, placing Juno into exactly the orbit that mission managers had planned for.
Juno’s principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter.
The JEDI instrument will measure electrons and other charged particles streaming around Jupiter to learn how they interact with the planet’s magnetic field.
Pioneer 10 launched on March 3, 1972, on a trajectory that would have it fly by Jupiter and then Saturn on its way out of the Solar System. “It can help us in the design and operation of the coming Europa Mission”.
After its mission is completed, Juno will be intentionally destroyed in order to abide by “Planetary Protection”. Earlier this week, on July 4th, Juno entered orbit around Jupiter.
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Tribune Newspapers and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
