The Juno probe NASA made history to reach the orbit of Jupiter after five years of mission and became the vehicle that best approximates the giant gaseous planet, with the aim of decipher its enigmas and find out more about the origin of the solar system.
Around 10:54 Monday, Colombian time, the solar-powered probe was incorporated into the orbit of Jupiter, ending a mission that began on 5 August 2011 and seeks to clear many questions about the largest planet in the solar system, so huge that it could fit Earth more than a thousand times.
“This is the hardest feat he has achieved never Nasa, “said Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the mission, the rest of his team in Pasadena (California), when the success of the maneuver entry into orbit was confirmed.
the ship, unmanned and the size of a basketball court, had already made history in January by becoming the probe driven by solar energy to reach further into space, to about 793 million kilometers from the sun.
Over the next 20 months, the probe will give 37 laps to the orbit of Jupiter to help improve understanding of the first moments of the solar system by revealing the origin and evolution of its biggest planet.
Juno is the first probe designed to operate in the heart of the radiation belts of Jupiter, the first to reach 2,575 kilometers from their superiors clouds and it will take higher resolution images of the giant planet.
now that it has completed the long and complicated maneuver of insertion into the orbit of Jupiter, the probe will approach the upper clouds of the planet every 14 days to finish the mission in February 2018, when it is scheduled to crash deliberately in the atmosphere planet and destroyed.
This is the most ambitious project in Jupiter since the Galileo NASA spacecraft entered orbit in 1995 and remained there for eight years, which led to the discovery that the bright planet had winds strong and their rings were formed from dust particles arrivals from surrounding moons.
But Juno will orbit for the first time the poles of Jupiter, which Galileo did not and that will provide new answers to the mysteries on its core composition and magnetic field.
the American probe is also the first to observe what lies beneath the dense clouds of the planet, so that the mission is named after the goddess Juno, sister and wife of Jupiter, which, according to Roman mythology, could see through the clouds.
according to NASA, this mission will help understand “how giant planets and the role they played in formed the . formation of the rest of the Solar System “
the giant planets, also called outer or gaseous, are those that are located beyond the asteroid belt, ie. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
Jupiter was probably the first of the planets formed around the Sun, because it contains many of the same light gases of which is made the star, hydrogen and helium, according to Nasa.
to be composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, Jupiter must have formed while there were many of these light gases around; ie when the solar system was young.
The mission of Juno has a total investment of 1,300 million dollars and is the second probe designed by NASA program New Frontiers, which is part the barranquillera Adriana Ocampo, and was created after New Horizons, which approached Pluto in July 2015 after nine and a half years of space journey.
Juno, the first probe to orbit from pole to pole one outer planet (which are beyond the asteroid belt), weighs 3,625 kilos in total and its main body measures 3.5 meters in height and diameter.
most of spacecraft that venture so far from the Sun they need to use nuclear energy to continue, but Juno is able to generate enough power with its three huge solar panels of 8.9 meters long each.
WHAT WILL JUNO ?. With its scientific instruments, Juno will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, examine the strong magnetic field of Jupiter, measured the amount of ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the auroras on the planet.
In addition, identify how much water has the atmosphere of Jupiter, which will help determine which theory of planet formation is correct, or if necessary develop new hypotheses.
Among its curiosities, the spacecraft carries three peculiar ‘crew’ , a Lego figures made of aluminum representing the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno and Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who discovered several moons of Jupiter, with which NASA wants to attract the attention of children to space, science and engineering.
in addition, the ship has the JunoCam, a camera that will take pictures of Jupiter and that all people have access through Juno.nasa.gov. “It will put on the website of a button where people can choose the images that the ship can take. This is so that everyone feels part of the mission, “said Ocampo.
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