Destination Jupiter: What to expect during the Juno mission

“Juno’s electronics are shielded in a titanium vault”, Larson said. So, now we know that NASA’s latest mission spacecraft has its name inspired from a Roman goddess who suspected her husband of disloyalty. During the primordial time when the inner planets were forming, Jupiter’s gravity acted like a slingshot for asteroids, sending them to where they are now in the asteroid and Kuiper belts, at relatively safe distances away from Earth, and keeping the inner solar system statistically free of life-ruining asteroids.

Above: Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA, left, talks during a media briefing at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Monday, July 4, 2016.

The telemetry and tracking data were received by NASA’s Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia.

“NASA did it again”, said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission.

The LEROS 1B brake engine, designed and built by a team of 20 at Moog-ISP, fired for 35 minutes to slow the spacecraft by 1,212mph to enable it to achieve orbit.

How long, exactly? It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011 with the intention of reaching Jupiter’s orbit, making its travel time almost five whole years.

Mission managers said early reports indicated Juno was healthy and performed flawlessly.

“Jupiter orbit insertion was a big step and the most challenging remaining in our mission plan, but there are others that have to occur before we can give the science team the mission they are looking for”. Previous Jupiter missions orbited or flew by the planet closer to the equator. “In all of history, we’ve never really been able to see the motion of any heavenly body against another”, Bolton said. Often considered to be a solar system in its own right – Jupiter’s diameter is 11 times that of the Earth and its Great Red Spot three times the size of our planet and its magnetosphere stretches all the way to Saturn’s rings – knowledge about Jupiter is, nevertheless, scarce. “There is a lot to see and do here”.

The planetarium’s monthly event Adler After Dark features a Jupiter theme in July, with hands-on programs exploring Jupiter’s storm systems, magnetic fields and family of moons, plus live music from Rosie and the Rivets.

Juno’s primary mission is to help scientists understand how the solar system was created, by finding out how the giant planet formed after the sun.

Along the way, Juno became the first spacecraft to cruise that far out powered by the sun, beating Europe’s comet-chasing Rosetta spacecraft.