JUNO OT l Welcome to Jupiter

Juno's principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation. As our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter can also provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars.

With its suite of 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.

Juno will let us take 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.

Read about the mission here
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

So we just had Juno reach Jupiter after a 5 year journey. It is now orbiting the planet and will get as close as 2500 miles from Jupiter's clouds. Here's the first ever footage of celestial bodies in orbit. It's a few of Jupiter's moons orbiting the planet. JUNO was able to capture this as it was approaching Jupiter



Mind blowing. Also the fine folks at JPL were only off by ONE SECOND on Juno's arrival. If you want to sort of understand the mental fukkery required , go get kerbal space program and try successfully getting off the ground on Earth, much less hitting another planets orbit millions of miles away.

Juno will orbit Jupiter for 20 months before being launched into the planet to its death. Similar to Galileo probe before it, this is to prevent it from accidentally crashing on to one of the moons and potentially contaminating it with bacteria.