A model of the Juno spacecraft at a news briefing, held before Juno enters orbit around Jupiter. (AFP Photo/NASA /Aubrey Gemignani)
NASA scientists have confirmed that Juno, a football-field-sized spacecraft designed to unlock some of the secrets of our solar system, successfully entered an orbit around Jupiter on Monday night.
To enter an orbit around Jupiter - the largest, oldest planet in our solar system, and one with some of the most powerful radiation scientists have ever seen - Juno had to complete a 35 minute long engine burn. This burn slowed the spacecraft down enough for Jupiter's gravitational pull to sweep it into an optimal orbit. After traveling billions of miles, Juno hurtled into an area of space just a few miles wide, aiming to hit that target within the span of a few seconds.
Juno is 534 million miles away from the Deep Space Network Antenna in Goldstone, Calif., used to pick up its signals. That means there's a 48-minute-long delay between things happening at Jupiter and us knowing about them at home.
At 10:30 p.m. EDT Monday, NASA began broadcasting live from mission control to document the Juno spacecraft's insertion into an orbit around Jupiter. At 11:18 the team announced that an engine burn designed to help the robot slip into an optimal orbit had started. Twenty minutes later, the team confirmed that the engine had burned long enough to enter some kind of orbit. But they needed to wait for the completion of the entire burn to be sure that they were in the cozy, 53-day orbit of Jupiter they were hoping for.
That signal came just a few minutes before midnight. Cheers broke out across the mission's two control centers, located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California and at the Lockheed Martin control room in Colorado. Now there's just one last step in the spacecraft's most crucial night: The probe needs to turn back to face the sun, as it's solar powered and only has a couple hours of battery power left. This repositioning should be confirmed within the hour.
We've visited Jupiter before - robotically, of course - but Juno is special. This spacecraft is designed to fly closer than any manmade object has ever gotten to Jupiter, probing beneath its roiling cloud cover to unlock new secrets. And Jupiter is a fascinating world. It could even help explain where Earth came from (read more about that here).
And Juno doesn't just have an interesting target. It's also a very interesting robot for its own sake. Jupiter has some of the most intense radiation in the solar system. In some areas, the electrons surrounding it move nearly at the speed of light. That would tear your average robot's computer to shreds, but Juno is encased in a unique suit of armor to protect it.
© 2016 The Washington Post
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