NASA's Juno Spacecraft To Reach Jupiter On July 4

First Posted: Jun 05, 2016 05:40 AM EDT
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NASA's solar powered spacecraft Juno is scheduled to reach Jupiter on July 4 after a journey of nearly five years. The goal of the Juno mission is to reveal the mysteries of Jupiter's origin and the solar system in general.

Once the spacecraft arrives at its destination, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) division of NASA in California's Pasadena will hold media events, photo opportunities and new briefings. NASA Television will also air the event of orbit insertion live on July 4 at 10:20 PM.  

July 4 will see Juno perform a 35-minute main engine burn and an orbit insertion maneuver. The process will slow down the spacecraft by approximately 542 meters per second so that it can enter Jupiter's orbit. Once in the gas giant's orbit, Juno will circle the planet 37 times in 20 months, coming within 5,000 kilometers of the cloud tops of the planet.

This is the first time ever that a spacecraft will be orbiting Jupiter's poles, and may offer explanations to the mysteries related to the planet's atmosphere, magnetic fields, composition and core. Incidentally, the Juno mission will be the second probe into Jupiter's orbit. The Galileo spacecraft had orbited Jupiter during the years 1995 to 2003, however unlike the solar powered Juno it was nuclear powered.

Juno had crossed the gravitational boundary between the Sun and Jupiter on May 27, after which the planet started to pull in the spacecraft.  Launched in August 2011, Juno has crossed three gravitational forces all of which influenced the spacecraft's journey, namely that of the Sun, Earth and Jupiter. At the very beginning of Juno's trek, Earth's gravity had the most influence on it, and recently that position was taken over by the Sun which had the most impact on the spacecraft's course. Juno is the size of a basketball court and contains the largest solar arrays for an interplanetary spacecraft ever flown, with each of the panels measuring 2.7 meters in width and 8.9 meters in length.

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

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