At precisely 8:53 p.m. PST, July 4th 2016, NASA piloted the Juno spacecraft into Jupiter's orbit. Juno traveled approximately 2.7 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles for you non-metric users) to become the first man-made object to be able to stay and monitor Jupiter. The trip took Juno over five years to complete! In 2011 when it was near time to launch, NASA (or any other space exploration team for that matter) did not have a rocket ship powerful enough to send Juno the required minimum of 587 million kilometers, which is the shortest possible distance between the Earth and Jupiter while their orbits are aligned. Instead of NASA spending billions of dollars creating a new rocket ship that they did not have the resources for or the time to build, scientists chose to use the Earth instead to power the spacecraft. Juno was launched into space in 2011 towards the sun. Two years later it returned to the Earth's orbit and used its gravity as a slingshot, giving it enough power and speed to reach Jupiter within the next three years. The gravitational slingshot gave Juno a boost of 14,100 km/hour (8800 mph)! Its peak speed towards Jupiter was around 265,000 km/hour (165,000 mph).
Jupiter's orbit is the most dangerous place in the entire solar system for a spacecraft to be. It is one of the most radioactive places known in the Milky Way. For some comparison, in a normal environment on Earth , we are exposed to one-third of a rad of radiation (a rad is a unit for how much radiation is absorbed by a life form). During the course of Juno's mission it will be exposed to 20 million rad. No mission has ever come this close to studying the gas giant because of its harsh toxic atmosphere.
This solar-powered craft will spend 20 months studying the planet’s composition and history. After it has gathered the information and sent it back to NASA, it will burn up in Jupiter's atmosphere. Juno was sent to Jupiter to answer one question: how did Jupiter form? The answer to how the predominately helium and hydrogen gas giant came to be could unlock many secrets to the universe. Understanding how other planets formed is one piece of the puzzle to knowing how the earth came into existence and why it appears to be the only planet with life. Juno will be running diagnostics on Jupiter's magnetic and gravitational fields to try and understand how Jupiter maintains such a powerful gravitational pull and magnetosphere despite being composed of gases. Perhaps the planet is more than just gases? Juno is the closest mankind has ever come to understanding what is at the core of a gas giant planet. Advanced diagnostics will begin in August 2016 and information should be sent back to NASA for investigation within a few months.
I received my information from jpl.nasa.gov, nytimes.com, and penny4nasa.org. Go check them out for more information about Juno and to get updates about the findings on Jupiter!
