Juno welcome to Jupiter
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft
in Orbit Around Mighty Jupiter
in July 4, 2016
Editor: Tony Greicius
Last Update: June 29, 2016, NASA
This artist’s rendering shows NASA’s Juno spacecraft above the north pole of Jupiter.
Launched in 2011, the Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in 2016 to study the giant planet from an elliptical, polar orbit. Juno will repeatedly dive between the planet and its intense belts of charged particle radiation, coming only 5,000 kilometers (about 3,000 miles) from the cloud tops at closest approach.
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. Confirmation that the burn had completed was received on Earth at 8:53 p.m. PDT (11:53 p.m. EDT) Monday, July 4.
“Independence Day always is something to celebrate, but today we can add to America’s birthday another reason to cheer — Juno is at Jupiter,” said NASA administrator Charlie Bolden. “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.”
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured
a unique time-lapse movie of the
Galilean satellites in motion about Jupiter.
The movie begins on June 12th with Juno
10 million miles from Jupiter, and
ends on June 29th, 3 million miles distant.
Confirmation of a successful orbit insertion was received from Juno tracking data monitored at the navigation facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as well as at the Lockheed Martin Juno operations center in Littleton, Colorado. The telemetry and tracking data were received by NASA’s Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia.
“This is the one time I don’t mind being stuck in a windowless room on the night of the 4th of July,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
“The mission team did great.
The spacecraft did great.
We are looking great. It’s a great day.”
Preplanned events leading up to the orbital insertion engine burn included changing the spacecraft’s attitude to point the main engine in the desired direction and then increasing the spacecraft’s rotation rate from 2 to 5 revolutions per minute (RPM) to help stabilize it..
The burn of Juno’s 645-Newton Leros-1b main engine began on time at 8:18 p.m. PDT (11:18 p.m. EDT), decreasing the spacecraft’s velocity by 1,212 miles per hour (542 meters per second) and allowing Juno to be captured in orbit around Jupiter.
Juno’s Mission duration
─ 6 years total
Cruise: 5 years
Science: 20 months
View from NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System. July 4, 2016
View from NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System. July 3, 2016
Where is Juno?
Using NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System and simulated data from the Juno flight team you can ride onboard the Juno spacecraft in real-time at any moment during the entire mission.
NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System program is a Web-based tool to journey with NASA’s spacecraft through the solar system. The experience is available on a Mac or PC by downloading NASA’s Eyes.