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juno

The incredible mass of Jupiter helped shape our little corner of the universe, and hidden in its swirling clouds could be the answers to a great many questions scientists still have about the early solar organisation. NASA's Juno spacecraft was launched five years ago to tease out some of those secrets, and it'south going to arrive at Jupiter in just a few weeks. It will get closer to the planet than any of the 8 by robotic missions, allowing us to finally peer below the clouds.

Juno was launched in the Summer of 2011, heading out on an eccentric path that took it past the orbit of Mars. That was just to set up information technology for a gravity aid from Globe that took place in 2013. This ready Juno on the necessary trajectory for its Jupiter encounter in several weeks. NASA is expecting Juno to enter orbit of the massive planet on July fourth, at which time information technology will take up a polar orbit. This is the preferred way to survey a planet considering it's perpendicular to the angle of rotation.

NASA hopes to come across Juno complete 37 orbits of Jupiter over the course of 20 months. Near of those will be 14-solar day orbits, merely the showtime few will exist longer equally the probe uses its pocket-size hydrazine engine to nudge information technology into the proper position. The orbital path chosen past NASA will put Juno within three,000 miles of Jupiter's cloudtops, far closer than whatsoever probe has gotten. This is risky considering Jupiter blasts out a huge amount of radiations that can fry a spacecraft that was not specifically designed to cope with it. On Globe we have a background radiations level of near 1-third of a rad. Juno will exist exposed to more than 20 million rads over the course of its Jupiter report.

radiation jupiter

Despite the ease with which fifty-fifty backyard amateur astronomers can peek at Jupiter'south massive form, we don't know exactly what it's like inside. Scientists think that when Jupiter formed, it vacuumed up all the gas nearby. That gas is what makes up most of Jupiter to this day. It'southward a sample of the affair that formed our entire solar arrangement, simply waiting to exist analyzed. One of the big questions Juno could respond with its microwave radiometer is how much water is in Jupiter's atmosphere. That could tell researchers where Jupiter formed and what the environment was similar when information technology did.

Water isn't the whole story, though. Juno may also answer in one case and for all the question of whether or not Jupiter has a solid core. Juno carries a radio wave instrument that is capable of measuring Jupiter'due south gravity as the spacecraft is jostled during its approaches. This should allow researchers to map the distribution of mass inside Jupiter and figure out if the core is solid or flowing.

Juno has cameras besides, and so wait to see some fantastic images of Jupiter in the next few months as the probe settles in to exercise some science.