7 Things You Need To Know About NASA's Big Jupiter Mission

6. What's Juno Going To Do?

When Juno began its manoeuvre to dunk into Jupiter's orbit on July 4th, it went screaming towards the planet at 130,000 miles per hour, and that's after it spending more than half an hour slamming on the brakes.

Due to the 540 million miles of open space between the Earth and Jupiter, and 48 minute signal delay, its final movements were preprogrammed and out of the controllers' hands.

As it gets cosy with the gas giant, Juno will make observations in radio, microwave, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet wavelengths, allowing us to piece together the most comprehensive picture of the planet to date. It will also take a good look at Jupiter's face-meltingly powerful magnetic field (20,000 times stronger than the Earth's).

The probe has already snapped a teaser image of the planet and its major moons during the approach, and there is plenty more where that came from.

After it has finished making its observations, Juno will take a suicidal plunge into Jupiter itself. This is to prevent it from crashing into any of its potentially life-harbouring moons and contaminating them, just incase we wipe a bunch of Jovian aliens out with the common cold or something.