NASA LAUNCHES SPACECRAFT JUNO TO JUPITOR

Million dollar spacecraft Juno travells to jupitor

                For the biggest planet in the solar system, NASA launched this Friday a spacecraft in order to investigate about its largest size. This shows that NASA is still working as the world’s leading institution for space exploration. This is going to be an exciting stuff as the spacecraft is going to reveals all the secrets about the planet Jupiter which will be very helpful to understand the origin and evolution of our universe.

                Named after the wife of the Roman god Jupiter, the $1.1 billion spacecraft is NASA's first mission there since it launched Galileo in 1989, and it aims for 30 orbits over a period of one year. Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any other NASA spacecraft and will be the first to undertake a polar orbit of the planet, said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator and scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any other NASA spacecraft and will be the first to undertake a polar orbit of the planet, said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator and scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

"One of the primary goals of Juno.... is (probing) the origin of Jupiter and the origin of our solar system," Bolton said Friday just before the launch.

"Juno is set up to learn about that early part of the solar system and learn how Jupiter formed, and by measuring the ingredients we are really looking for the recipe of planet formation."

NASA's Galileo, an orbiter and probe that launched 22 years ago, entered the planet's orbit in 1995 and plunged into Jupiter in 2003, ending its life.

Other NASA spacecraft -- including Voyager 1 and 2, Ulysses and New Horizons -- have done flybys of the fifth planet from the Sun.

Juno will spend the first two years of its mission going around the Sun, and then will return for a flyby of Earth which will give a gravitational boost to accelerate Juno on a three-year path toward Jupiter.

When it gets there, Juno -- orbiting around 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) above the gas giant -- will make use of a series of instruments, some of which were provided by European space agency partners Italy, Belgium, France and Denmark, to learn about the workings of the planet and what is inside.

Two key experiments will gauge how much water is in Jupiter and whether the planet "has a core of heavy elements at the center, or whether it is just gas all the way down," Bolton said at a press briefing last week.

Scientists also hope to learn more about Jupiter's magnetic fields and its Great Red Spot, a storm that has been raging for more than 300 years.

"One of the fundamental questions is how deep the roots to that red spot are? How does it maintain itself for so long?" said Bolton.

Juno is carrying a few toys as part of a campaign to raise awareness among young people about math and science.

Three 1.5 inch figurines made by LEGO toys are on board -- a likeness of the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilee who discovered four of Jupiter's moons, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno.

Back in 2003, when plans for Juno were being crafted, NASA briefly considered using some sort of nuclear fuel to power the spacecraft, but engineers decided it would be quicker and less risky to go with solar.

Juno is part of a series of new planetary science missions, to be followed by Grail, which is headed to the moon in September, and the Mars Science Laboratory set to take off in November.

"These missions are designed to tackle some of the toughest questions in planetary science, all about our origin and the evolution of the solar system," said Jim Green, director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington.