NASA’s Juno spacecraft is getting close to its July 4th entry into orbit around Jupiter, nearly five years after leaving Cape Canaveral on Aug. 5, 2011.
Juno is now close enough that the JunoCam is beaming images back to Earth showing the planet’s cloud bands, and Jupiter’s four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
Juno’s propulsion system will be pressurized on Tuesday, which NASA says is one of the most crucial steps before the spacecraft slips into Jupiter’s atmosphere on Friday.
Mission chief scientist Scott Bolton, from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told The Associated Press that the firing of Juno’s main engine to push it into Jupiter’s orbit Friday is “a one shot deal.”
If successful, the spacecraft will circle the planet’s poles looking for evidence of whether the gas giant has a solid core. It will also map magnetic fields, measure water and gases in the atmosphere and observe auroras, according to NASA
The first unmanned spacecraft to orbit Jupiter was Galileo, which explored the giant planet and its moons from 1995 to 2003. Galileo was launched in 1989 and took eight years to reach its destination.
Unlike nuclear-powered Galileo, Juno is a solar-powered craft. It has wings that are nearly nine metres wide. Juno will be more than 800 million kilometres from the sun by Friday.
After Juno completes its mission in 2018, it will plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere and burn up.
With files from The Associated Press
