Juno going to Jupiter

Jupiter is the biggest planet in the Solar System, a gaseous giant composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. It was explored by robotic spacecraft during the Pioneer and Voyager fly-by missions, and by the Galileo orbiter.

When the Juno Probe blasts off this August, it will aim to find out more about this huge planet. It will take the Juno Probe five years to reach Jupiter.

Experts hope that studying Jupiter will lead to a better understanding of our solar system because they think that Jupiter and the Sun were formed at the same time, and are largely composed of the same types of materials.

Juno will be the first mission to Jupiter by a craft using solar panels instead of thermoelectric generators.

And of course Juno will carry a wide range of scientific instruments in order to investigate the composition of Jupiter’s magnetic field and its atmosphere to determine if the gaseous mass has a solid core.

That will help improve our understanding of magnetic objects, and also our understanding of young stars with their own planetary systems.

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