NASA Says ‘Hello, Jupiter’: Juno Satellite Enters Orbit

It was around midnight on July 4 when NASA’s Juno Mission Control put out the call to the rest of the agency.

“All stations on Juno co-ord, we have the tone for burn cut-off on Delta B," the team announced.

"Roger Juno,” the reply came. “Welcome to Jupiter."

After an almost five-year journey to the solar system’s largest planet, NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit during a 35-minute engine burn, the agency reported Tuesday.

“Independence Day always is something to celebrate, but today we can add to America’s birthday another reason to cheer… Juno is at Jupiter,” NASA administrator Charlie Bolden extolled. “And what is more American than a NASA mission going boldly where no spacecraft has gone before? With Juno, we will investigate the unknowns of Jupiter’s massive radiation belts to delve deep into not only the planet’s interior, but into how Jupiter was born and how our entire solar system evolved.”

The successful entry wasn’t easy, NASA officials reported. Pre-planned events leading up to the orbital insertion engine burn included changing the spacecraft’s altitude to point the main engine in the desired direction and then increasing the spacecraft’s rotation rate from two to five revolutions per minute to help stabilize it.

In order for Jupiter to capture Juno in its orbit, the spacecraft’s velocity had to be decreased by 1,212 miles per hour, NASA officials stated.

“The spacecraft worked perfectly, which is always nice when you’re driving a vehicle with 1.7 billion miles on the odometer,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from JPL. “Jupiter orbit insertion was a big step and the most challenging remaining in our mission plan, but there are others that have to occur before we can give the science team the mission they are looking for.”

THE MISSION

According to NASA officials, over the next few months Juno’s mission and science teams will perform final testing on the spacecraft’s subsystems, final calibration of science instruments and some science collection.

“Our official science collection phase begins in October, but we’ve figured out a way to collect data a lot earlier than that,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Which when you’re talking about the single biggest planetary body in the solar system is a really good thing. There is a lot to see and do here.”

NASA scientists said that Juno's principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. With its suite of nine science instruments, Juno will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter's intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the planet's auroras.

NASA scientists hope that the mission will result in a “giant step forward” in our understanding of how giant planets form and the role these titans played in putting together the rest of the solar system.

“As our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter also can provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars,” NASA officials stated.

Learn more about the Juno mission here.

The mission is already producing amazing videos and space photos, NASA officials reported. During its voyage, Juno captured unique footage of the Galilean satellites in motion about Jupiter. The below video begins on June 12, with Juno about 10 million miles from Jupiter, and ends on June 29, three million miles away.

Photo/Video: NASA