At 165,000 mph, Juno Sets World Record as Fastest Manmade Object

Pasadena, CA -- Juno didn’t just make history Monday, it also set a world record as the fastest manmade object, hurtling into Jupiter’s gravitational pull at a speed of 165,000 miles per hour.

The record was announced Thursday by The Guinness Book of World Records, which confirmed that the spacecraft, by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, blew past the record held since 1976 when the Helios 1 probe when it plunged past the sun in a highly elliptical orbit.

On its website, the Guinness Book of World Records credits the gravitational pull of Jupiter for the force that put Juno into record-setting territory.

“The gas giant’s pull accelerated the already fast-moving probe to a speed of 265,000 km/h (165,000 mph), making it the Fastest spacecraft (and arguably the fastest man-made object) ever,” according to the Guinness Book of World Records

It’s the historic spacecraft’s second world record. The first was set in January when Juno became the Most distant solar-powered spacecraft. At the time, Juno passed the 492 million mile distance mark set by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe in 2012.

The $1.1 billion Juno mission survived a critical test Monday night when it burned its main engine in order to slow to 1,200 mph to be captured by Jupiter's orbit, according to NASA.

After surviving the 35-minute burn-off into Jupiter’s orbit, Juno’s nearly 20,000 solar panels shifted toward the sun to boost its energy.

"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 at the time.

Juno launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August 2011, hurtling thousands of miles per hour through space to arrive in Jupiter’s orbit within a minute of its projected arrival time. Scientists believe it will give them a glimpse into the origins of the solar system as well as an understanding of the massive, largely mysterious planet.

By the end of the mission, scientists hope to know if the gaseous planet has a solid core. Gas giants such as Jupiter are common in the universe, and scientists believe they are formed from a rocky core that gathers dust and gas that wasn't consumed by the central star, such as the sun, according to NASA.

Over the next 20 months, Juno will collect data on the moisture content in Juno’s atmosphere as well as the planet’s gravity and magnetic field. Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest structure in the universe - five times the distance between the Earth and sun, according to JPL.

Juno will complete its historic mission by plunging into the planet.