I can’t be the only one wanting us to visit Mars on foot. The sci-fi nerd inside wants scenarios that play out in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Interstellar” to be feasible reality in generations to come. While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) prolongs what I hope is the inevitable with manned missions in later decades to come, for now, they have focused the majority of their scientific efforts on unmanned missions throughout our solar system.

Most recently, there is the satellite mission Juno that aims to learn all it, and we through it, can from Jupiter’s makeup. The special space probe launched all the way back in 2011 and just now entered the planet’s orbit on the Fourth of July this year.

According to the mission overview at the official NASA webpage, the main goals are to see how Jupiter began and further understand how it evolved to the present day. This will include multiple satellite orbits on behalf of Juno that will measure how much water is in Jupiter’s atmosphere, what the magnetosphere of the planet can do and why Jupiter is structurally so unique.

Thankfully, Juno is one of a few missions in NASA’s New Frontiers program that was created and enforced to help us grow in our understanding of the universe, starting with our own solar system. The other missions include New Horizons and OSIRIS-REx.

New Horizons was actually launched first. This satellite needed a handicap start on his Juno competition because New Horizons is currently bound for the dwarf planet, Pluto. OSIRIS-REx, on the other hand, will not be exploring a planet at all. Scheduled to launch later in 2016, this mission will involve the craft exploring an organics-filled asteroid to bring back samples for study.

So while NASA is keeping themselves busy with some very ambitious satellite missions, we can wait in anticipation as the New Frontiers missions are sure to discover exciting truths about the space in which we live. These scientific frontiers just keep expanding.