‘Welcome to Jupiter’: NASA Mission Puts Juno in Orbit After Five-Year Journey
July 5th, 2016Via: Guardian:
After a five-year voyage across 1.8bn miles (2.8bn km), Nasa’s Juno spacecraft has reached Jupiter and successfully entered its orbit.
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Juno’s mission is to peer through Jupiter’s cloud-socked atmosphere and map the interior from a unique vantage point above the poles. Among the lingering questions: How much water exists? Is there a solid core? Why are Jupiter’s southern and northern lights the brightest in the solar system?
“What Juno’s about is looking beneath that surface,” Bolton said before the craft’s arrival. “We’ve got to go down and look at what’s inside, see how it’s built, how deep these features go, learn about its real secrets.”
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.
Bristling with instruments, Juno will peer deep beneath Jupiter’s clouds to learn how the planet formed; what drives its brilliant aurorae; and how its complex weather systems produce the giant red spot and the swirling, enigmatic stripes that decorate its outer layers.
