540 million miles later, cheers as Juno slips into Jupiter's orbit
Mission control erupted in cheers Monday night when, from 540 million miles across the solar system, NASA received the much-anticipated message: 鈥淲elcome to Jupiter!鈥�
NASA鈥檚 solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the largest planet in the solar system, flawlessly executing a 35-minute engine burn to slow down enough to be captured into orbit.
The execution was challenging but flawless: Juno鈥檚 main engine fired to slow down the space probe by about 1,212 miles per hour from just as it was .
At 11:18 pm eastern indicating that its main engine had been switched on and the next 35 minutes confirmed that Juno was circling Jupiter in precisely the planned orbit before the on-time engine shutdown.
鈥�,鈥� Scott Bolton, the mission鈥檚 principal investigator, said, according to CNN. "We're there, we're in orbit. We conquered Jupiter."
Juno was to study the composition and history of what scientists believe to be the first planet formed in our solar system. The probe will circle Jupiter 37 times, gathering data with its seven instruments onboard including a camera that the space agency says the public can help .
The Juno team hopes the $1.1-billion mission will provide the first accurate survey of Jupiter鈥檚 magnetic field, which is , generating polar auroras larger than our entire planet. And Juno offers hope for a peek beneath the planet鈥檚 gaseous veil, a glimpse at Jupiter鈥檚 core 鈥� to determine if it鈥檚 rocky or gaseous 鈥� and to聽.
When Galileo, NASA鈥檚 previous mission to Jupiter, entered its orbit in 1995, its instruments were damaged by the radiation, so ultimately the space probe was only able to .
Juno, including its solar panels, has a span that's almost as long as a tennis court, and has performed excellently so far and scientists are hopeful it will shed light on the yet unanswered questions.
"After a 1.7-billion-mile journey, we hit our burn targets within one second on a target [in space] that was just tens of kilometers large," Rick Nybakken, the Juno project manager, said, according to CBS. "Isn't that incredible? That's how good our team is, and that's how well the Juno spacecraft performed tonight."
", and it's also just the beginning," said Juno project scientist Steve Levin of JPL to Space.com.
