NASA’s Juno spacecraft beams first pictures from Jupiter

That was the plan, of course.

The new view was obtained on July 10, 2016, at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT, 5:30 UTC), when the spacecraft was 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit. “Juno will let us take a giant step forward in our understanding of how giant planets form and the role these titans played in putting together the rest of the solar system”. “It’s doing very well”. The probe, created to enter Jupiter’s atmosphere, burned up within an hour of release as the temperature and pressure grew too great. The firing of the main engine can induce slight wobbles because of fuel left in the tanks.

The very bad aspect of the $1.13 billion mission which launched in 2011 occurred on Monday AT 11,18 pm when Juno reached its final approach procedures. It can complete its remaining 36 burns.

Scientists have said close-ups of Jupiter won’t come until next month when Juno swings back around. Many models of our early solar system involve Jupiter “throwing its weight around” in ways that include delivering to Earth the water that makes up our oceans, keeping Mars small, and perhaps ejecting one or more planets that were formerly numbered with our current eight.

“It’s the gateway to being that much closer to getting this really tantalizing science data”, Nybakken said.

The JunoCam camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter is operational and sending back information, the space agency has announced. The probe’s science instruments were off at the time of arrival, to reduce complications during a crucial, 35-minute-long orbital-insertion burn. Other targets for future space missions include the ice giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, which are fundamentally different from the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn in their structure, makeup, and inner workings. The planet’s magnetic field traps dust from Io and accelerates it, producing the intense radiation for which Jupiter is notorious.

The view yielded a surprise: Jupiter’s second-largest moon, Callisto, appeared dimmer than initially thought. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft discovered the potato-shaped moon orbiting Jupiter and in a recent flyby found that the moon may be a collection of boulders rather then a solid body.

Juno’s data will also provide insights into the meteorology of Jupiter’s colorful bands of clouds and will help explain how the Great Red Spot has persisted for centuries – and perhaps why it is now shrinking.