Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena cheer news that June successfully entered orbit around Jupiter. Courtesy JPL
The JPL-managed Juno spacecraft is on its first full day orbiting Jupiter tTuesday after completing a 1.7-billion-mile odyssey lasting almost five years on a mission scientists hope will give them insight into the makeup of the planet and the origins of the solar system.
Juno, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Aug. 5, 2011, entered Jupiter’s magnetosphere late last month. Then, on Monday night, the spacecraft, which is about the size of a basketball court, performed a 35- minute burn of its main engine, slowing the craft to about 1,200 mph so it could be captured by Jupiter’s orbit.
“Success! Engine burn complete. #Juno is now orbiting #Jupiter, poised to unlock the planet’s secrets,” NASA tweeted just before 9 p.m. Monday.
The successful burn elicited cheers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where team leaders applauded the Jupiter arrival of the $1.1 billion mission.
President Barack Obama added kudos today, posting on Twitter: “Incredible! After a 5-year journey, we’re up close and personal with our solar system’s largest planet. Welcome to Jupiter, @NASAJuno.”
Soon after Monday night’s burn was completed, Juno turned toward the sun so its 18,698 solar cells could once again receive energy. NASA officials said all the spacecraft’s systems appear to be operating well. Its instruments will be turned back on in two days,
“The spacecraft worked perfectly, which is always nice when you’re driving a vehicle with 1.7 billion miles on the odometer,” Juno project manager Rick Nybakken said.
Diane Brown, the program executive for Juno at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., added that Juno’s performance had been flawless.
“To know we can all go to bed tonight, not worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, it’s pretty awesome,” she said at a news conference.
Juno is now in an elliptical 53-day orbit around Jupiter and not scheduled to make a close pass over the surface for weeks. It will orbit the planet 37 times over the next 20 months.
During that time, the craft will measure how much water is in the planet’s atmosphere; measure the composition, temperature and cloud motions in the atmosphere; map the planet’s magnetic and gravity fields; and explore the planet’s massive magnetosphere. It will also try to determine if the mostly gaseous planet has a solid core.
JPL officials said Jupiter’s magnetosphere is the largest structure in the universe, and if it glowed, it would be visible from Earth and be twice as large as the full moon. It has a length about five times the distance between the Earth and sun.
Through the study of the planet, which is mostly hydrogen and helium, scientists hope to gain insight into the formation of the solar system by learning more about the formation of giant planets. At the end of its mission, the Juno spacecraft will plunge into the planet.
The spacecraft is carrying a likeness of one of the founding fathers of modern astronomy, Galileo Galilei, along with images of the Roman supreme god, Jupiter, and his wife, Juno.
It was Galileo who discovered — in 1610 — that Jupiter is orbited by several moons. Those satellites — named Callisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede — are known as the Galilean moons.
— City News Service
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