7 Things You Need To Know About NASA's Big Jupiter Mission
The brave little probe has successfully reached Jupiter!
Have you heard? We're going to Jupiter.
Well, there's no need to pack your bags just yet, we've sent a scout on ahead, and its name is Juno. After a five year journey, the little probe has successfully plunged into orbit around the planet.
The Juno mission is NASA's latest investigation into the solar system's largest member and it is hoped that the Juno probe will give us unprecedented access to the huge planet.
Jupiter is a gas giant, and its composition is pretty much the same as the sun's, but due to its lower mass it never managed to become a star. It's still huge, though, at 11 times wider and 300 times more massive than the Earth, even the famous Great Red Spot could swallow our planet 3 times over.
The Juno mission hopes to accomplish a lot of things. We'll finally get to peer through Jupiter's clouds and right into the distant past of the solar system. We'll get a good look at the storms raging across the surface and gather massive amounts of data on the planet and its moons. The probe will take the highest-resolution photos of Jupiter ever and we might, just might, get a better idea of whether the system is capable of supporting life.
So, just in case you haven't been keeping abreast of the latest NASA news, we'll boil down a few key facts about the latest voyage to the stars.