Juno probe successfully enters orbit around Jupiter, NASA announces

After traveling for five years across the Solar System, NASA’s Juno probe has reached its ultimate destination, entering into orbit around Jupiter on Monday, July 4.

“Independence Day always is something to celebrate, but today we can add to America’s birthday another reason to cheer – Juno is at Jupiter,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said in a news release. “And what is more American than a NASA mission going boldly where no spacecraft has gone before? With Juno, we will investigate the unknowns of Jupiter’s massive radiation belts to delve deep into not only the planet’s interior, but into how Jupiter was born and how our entire solar system evolved.”

NASA was able to confirm the basketball court-sized probe had entered into orbit around the gas giant using telemetry and tracking data received by NASA antennas in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia.

“This is the one time I don’t mind being stuck in a windowless room on the night of the Fourth of July,” said Scott Bolton, the mission’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute.

An incredible probe on an amazing journey

Juno launched in August 2011 the probe hit the all-time speed record during its lengthy journey to Jupiter. This past January, the probe also became the farthest-flung solar-powered spacecraft ever, cruising past the record of 492 million miles from the sun that was set by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission.

Jupiter is five times farther away from the sun than Earth does, and consequently receives 25 times less sunlight than our home planet. To harness that meager supply of radiation, Juno has nearly 19,000 individual solar cells, which are distributed among three 29.5-foot-long panels.

In addition to accumulating enough energy to function arond Jupiter, Juno must also cope with the most intense radiation in the solar system. Jupiter’s magnetic field, which is 20,000 times stronger than that of Earth, fires enormous swarms of electrons to almost the speed of light.

In the face of those challenges, NASA officials sound undaunted about their upcoming research.

“Our official science collection phase begins in October, but we’ve figured out a way to collect data a lot earlier than that,” Bolton said. “Which when you’re talking about the single biggest planetary body in the solar system is a really good thing. There is a lot to see and do here.”

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Image credit: NASA

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