On July 4th 2016, NASA announced that its Juno spacecraft had been successfully inserted into orbit around the planet Jupiter. The mission's success came at 11:53 pm (EDT), after a nearly five year, 1.7 billion mile journey. Juno is expected to orbit the gas giant for twenty months or 37 orbits. It will become the first of NASA's spacecraft to assume a polar orbit and will fly at an altitude of 31,000 miles.
The main objective of Juno's mission is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. While in orbit, Juno will investigate the possibility of a sold Jovian planetary core. Other mission goals include mapping Jupiter's electromagnetic fields, measuring the amount of water and ammonia within the atmosphere, and a closer inspection of the planets auroras. The mission is also to gain an understanding of how giant planets like Jupiter are formed.
Juno is the second spacecraft designed under NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first was the New Horizons probe which flew by Pluto in 2015. Juno was launched in august of 2011. After its twenty month mission is over, the spacecraft will be deliberately flown into Jupiter's atmosphere where it will be destroyed by the planet's extreme temperatures and pressure. This will serve to protect the moons of Jupiter from any possible earthly contamination.
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