(Mike Wall, Space.com/Reuters) — A NASA spacecraft has completed a nearly 5-year voyage through the solar system to Jupiter and successfully begun an audacious mission by entering the large and mysterious planet's orbit in a historic first.
Success! Engine burn complete. #Juno is now orbiting #Jupiter, poised to unlock the planet's secrets. https://t.co/YFsOJ9YYb5
— NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016
Juno will study Jupiter intensively over the next year and a half, peering deep inside the gas giant to help researchers better understand how it formed and evolved — information that should shed light on planet-formation processes in general.
Juno fired its main engine for 35 minutes beginning at 11:18 a.m. EDT/0318 Tuesday GMT, slowing the spacecraft so it could be captured by the planet's gravity.
Engine burn complete and orbit obtained. I’m ready to unlock all your secrets, #Jupiter. Deal with it.
— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) July 5, 2016
Once in position to begin its 20-month science mission, Juno will fly in egg-shaped orbits, each one lasting 14 days, to learn if Jupiter has a dense core beneath its clouds and map its massive magnetic field.
"One of the primary goals of Juno is to learn the recipe for solar systems," mission principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said during a news conference earlier this month.
"Jupiter holds a very unique position in helping us learn about that recipe, because it was the first planet to form, so it gives you that very first step in the recipe," Bolton added. "What happened after the sun formed that allowed the planets to form? Because that's really the history of not only our system, but us, here at Earth."
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