NASA is popping the corks on the first round of champagne as Juno arrived at Jupiter to start its official mission. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and NASA aims to gather as much data in the 20 month mission as it possibly can. Juno is now orbiting the planet 540 million miles away from Earth and sent a message back simply saying, “Welcome to Jupiter.”
Engine burn complete and orbit obtained. I’m ready to unlock all your secrets, #Jupiter. Deal with it.
— NASA’s Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) July 5, 2016
Juno’s computer systems had to maneuver the probe into Jupiter’s orbit, a tricky one-shot job indeed. Given that the closest repair shop is 540 million miles away…NASA was elated to see Juno made orbit without a hitch.
“Preliminary looks are that the spacecraft is performing well ,” said Guy Beutelschies, Director of Interplanetary Missions at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, the company that built the spacecraft.
Success! Engine burn complete. #Juno is now orbiting #Jupiter, poised to unlock the planet’s secrets. https://t.co/YFsOJ9YYb5
— NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016
“After a 1.7 billion mile journey, we hit our burn targets within one second, on a target that was just tens of kilometers large,” said Nybakken. “That’s how well the Juno spacecraft performed tonight.”
“In all of history, we’ve never really been able to see the motion of any heavenly body against another,” Bolton told CNN, describing Jupiter and its moons as a “mini solar system.”
“You have multiple moons going around Jupiter, and each one is going around at a different speed, based on its distance away from the planet. This is the king of our solar system and its disciples going around it.It’s very significant, we’re finally able to see with real video, real pictures, this motion that we’ve only been able to imagine it until today.”
This is a pretty significant event for space exploration and one the world is watching. What do you think of NASA’s Juno probe making it to Jupiter? Let us know your thoughts and comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
[button link=”http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/04/world/juno-jupiter-nasa/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: CNN[/button]Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
