This Atlas V rocket carrying the Juno spacecraft lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2011. This was where Juno’s 2.9 billion-kilometre journey to the gas giant planet, Jupiter began (Photo: AP)


The details sound awesome and breath-taking. NASA’s Juno spacecraft travelling at a speed of 265,542 kilometres per hour, covered 2.9 billion kilometres to reach the orbit of the planet, Jupiter. It has been travelling at that speed for five years.

This morning, the spacecraft fired its main rocket engine to slow down so it can enter into the orbit of the planet scientists refer to as the gas giant.

At a press conference this morning at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Scott Bolton who is Juno’s Principal Investigator, confirmed the spacecraft’s successful entry into Jupiter’s orbit.

 

Launching from Earth in 2011, the Juno spacecraft arrived at Jupiter yesterday to study the giant planet from an elliptical, polar orbit. Juno will repeatedly dive between the planet and its intense belts of charged particle radiation, coming only 5,000 kilometers (about 3,000 miles) from the cloud tops at closest approach. (Photo: NASA)

Juno’s mission began in 2011 and is programmed to terminate in 2018 when it will take “a swan dive” into Jupiter’s atmosphere and disintegrate. The programmed disintegration, according to NASA, is to prevent the spacecraft from accidentally crashing into any of the moons of Jupiter which are for now, believed to be capable of holding life.

In the course of its exploration mission, Juno will circle the world of Jupiter 33 times, soaring low over the planet’s clouds. This will enable scientists to see what lies beneath Jupiter’s atmosphere and to, according to NASA, learn more about how the solar system was formed.

Juno is solar-powered. To enter into Jupiter’s orbit this morning, the spacecraft was on autopilot so it did not need to be controlled from NASA’s laboratory in California.

 

At 8:18 p.m. PDT (11:18 p.m. EDT), Juno’s 35-minute main-engine burn will begin. This will slow it enough to be captured by the giant planet’s gravity. The burn will impart a mean change in velocity of 1,212 mph (542 meters a second) on the spacecraft. It is performed in view of Earth, allowing its progress to be monitored by the mission teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, via signal reception by Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia. (Photo: NASA)

Said Bolton to pressmen this morning: “We’re there. We’re in orbit. We conquered Jupiter… What Juno’s about is looking beneath that surgace… 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.”

At the moment, Juno is said to be dwelling through a very hostile radiation environment but Kenny Starnes, the Programme Manager of Lockheed Martin which built the spacecraft believes it will be able to withstand it. Juno’s camera and other instruments were switched off as the spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit but the scientists say there will be lots of close-up photographs of the planet.

 

After the main engine burn, Juno will be in orbit around Jupiter. The spacecraft will spin down from 5 to 2 RPM, turn back toward the sun, and ultimately transmit telemetry via its high-gain antenna. (Photo: AP)

It is celebration time as the solar-powered Juno spacecraft goes into orbit around Jupiter. Seen here are Jim Green (left) and Scott Bolton in Mission Control at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(Photo: AP)

Juno’s mission is at a cost of $1.1billion.