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NASA’s Jupiter exploration space probe Juno celebrates 10 years in space today (August 5).
On August 5, 2011, Juno was launched into space from the Cape Canaveral Space Station (formerly known as the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station) in Florida. He arrived in Jupiter five years later and since then he has eagerly studied the gas giant and its moons from its orbit.
NASA selected the mission in 2005 and originally planned to launch it in 2009, but it was delayed due to budget restrictions. Juno finally took off six years after his selection and finally arrived in Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016.
The spacecraft is one of three New Frontiers NASA missions (which also include New Horizons and OSIRIS-REx) and is one of eight other spacecraft that have visited the Jovian district. Today, ten years after its launch and five years after arriving in Jupiter, here’s a look at what Juno has accomplished and discovered throughout its mission.
Photos: NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter
Ten years after its launch and five years since arriving in Jupiter, Juno has worked hard to collect data and observe the planet. NASA sent it to Jupiter to answer questions about the planet’s water, its atmosphere, magnetic and gravitational fields, and more.
In August 2016, just a month after arriving in Jupiter, Juno first discovered that the planet’s well-known stripes, the stripes that make it instantly recognizable, actually extend far into Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The probe also gave us the very first view of the interior of Jupiter’s rings and revealed how different the auroras on Jupiter are from those on Earth.
Juno also directly detected Jupiter’s internal magnetic field. It was a historic discovery because it was the first time that an internal magnetic field was detected on a planet beyond Earth. Juno also helped scientists find and study Jupiter’s “shallow lightning bolts” and “ball balls” (or hailstorms made of molten ammonia) of Jupiter.
In addition to the craft’s ongoing discoveries and exploration, he has also collected a plethora of incredible images of the Jovian system. In 2017, the probe took a multitude of images of the planet’s iconic Great Red Spot, allowing us here on Earth to see something up close that we had seen from afar for so long.
In 2021, NASA extended Juno’s mission to keep the probe exploring until September 2025, unless the spacecraft stops working sooner. This expansion will allow the probe to continue to explore not only Jupiter, but the entire Jovan system, which includes the planet with its rings and many moons (at last count Jupiter has 79 known moons, of which 53 have been named and four of which the largest, known as the “Galilean moons”.)
For those who want to celebrate Juno’s decade of space exploration, check out some of the photos of the probe over the years, or you can even make your own Juno spacecraft using the instructions provided by NASA here.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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