At 165000 miles per hour, Juno Sets World Record as Fastest Manmade Object

The $1.1 billion Juno mission survived a critical test Monday night when it burned its main engine in order to slow to 1,200 miles per hour to be captured by Jupiter’s orbit, according to NASA. But what happens when the courageous voyager is done serving its goal?

Juno is the first Lockheed Martin spacecraft ever to fly 3-D printed parts – a set of eight titanium waveguide brackets, to be precise.

After its mission is completed, Juno will be intentionally destroyed in order to abide by “Planetary Protection”. Better to go up in a blaze of glory rather than fade away, I suppose.

Washington Post: Why scientists are so excited about the Juno probe that is finally orbiting Jupiter – “After five years hurtling through space, NASA’s Juno probe slipped into orbit around Jupiter, the biggest, oldest planet in our cosmic neighborhood, on the Fourth of July”. How come that’s the only solution? “The extraordinary five year journey involved a push through the inner solar system, a slingshot around the sun, a flyby of Earth and ultimately a capture by Jupiter’s gravity”.

This composite image of photographs made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on December 29, 2000 shows the planet Jupiter.

Katie Ascough spoke with Jennifer Wiseman, an American astrophysicist, to find out more about this spacecraft, Juno, and it’s mission.

It is the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter since Galileo, which deliberately crashed into the planet in September 2003.

“The amount on Jupiter should tell us a lot about how and where the planet formed”, Levin said. They also found of ammonia and methane in Jupiter’s absorption spectra and evidence of a formidable magnetic field around the planet.

While NASA knows what they’re doing, Brown said that the potential discoveries for the mission are boundless.

At approximately 8:18 pm PDT, engineers and scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena began a 35-minute burn that would position the spacecraft for a smooth transition into Jovian orbit.

His first major discovery involving Jupiter was in February 2006, when he observed that the planet’s Oval Ba white spot has turned red.

With the JEDI instrument, the Hopkins scientists will zero in on an area near Jupiter’s poles where the charged material speeds up before it bombards the planet’s atmosphere, triggering the auroras.