NASA's Juno Probe Completes 5-year Journey to Jupiter

NASA?s Juno spacecraft safely entered Jupiter?s orbit early Tuesday after completing a five-year journey across 1.8 billion miles of deep space.

 

The spacecraft began firing its main engines at 8:18 pm local time Monday to slow itself down so it could be captured by Jupiter?s gravity.

 

 

Thirty-five minutes later, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. ? Mission Control ? received confirmation: Juno's attempt to throw itself into orbit had been successful.

 

 

"All stations on Juno co-ord, we have the tone for burn cut-off on Delta B," Juno Mission Control announced, followed by: "Roger Juno, welcome to Jupiter."

 

 

The $1.1 billion Juno will now use its sensors to explore Jupiter for clues about how our solar system formed billions of years ago.

This is pretty damn awesome. I had no idea that this was even a project going on.