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Jet Propulsion Lab (CNN) NASA says it has received tones confirming its Juno spacecraft has successfully started orbiting Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
"Welcome to Jupiter!" flashed on screens at mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. The Juno team cheered and hugged.
"This is phenomenal," said Geoff Yoder, acting administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Congrats nasa!
The US space agency has successfully put a new probe in orbit around Jupiter. The Juno satellite, which left Earth five years ago, had to fire a rocket engine to slow its approach to the planet and get caught by its gravity. A sequence of tones transmitted from the spacecraft confirmed the braking manoeuvre had gone as planned. Receipt of the radio messages prompted wild cheering at Nasa's mission control in Pasadena, California. "All stations on Juno co-ord, we have the tone for burn cut-off on Delta B," Juno Mission Control had announced. "Roger Juno, welcome to Jupiter."
Scientists plan to use the spacecraft to sense the planet's deep interior. They think the structure and the chemistry of its insides hold clues to how this giant world formed some four-and-a-half-billion years ago. Engineers had warned in advance that the engine firing was fraught with danger. No previous spacecraft has dared pass so close to Jupiter; its intense radiation belts can destroy unprotected electronics. One calculation even suggested the orbit insertion would have subjected Juno to a dose equivalent to a million dental X-rays. But the probe is built like a tank with titanium shielding, and the 35-minute rocket burn appeared to go without a hitch.
While the radiation dangers have not gone away, the probe should now be able to prepare its instruments to start sensing what lies beneath Jupiter's opaque clouds. Tuesday's orbit insertion has put Juno in a large ellipse around the planet that takes just over 53 days to complete. A second burn of the rocket engine in mid-October will tighten this orbit to just 14 days. It is then that the science can really start. This will involve repeat passes just a few thousand kilometres above the cloudtops.
At each close approach, Juno will use its eight remote sensing instruments - plus its camera - to peer down through the gas planet's many layers, to measure their composition, temperature, motion and other properties. A priority will be to determine the abundance of oxygen at Jupiter. This will be bound up in its water. "How much water Jupiter has tells us a lot about where the planet formed early in the Solar System," explained team-member Candy Hansen. "We think that Jupiter may not have formed where it is today, and if it formed further away or closer in - that tells us a lot about how the Solar System in general formed. Because when we look at planets around other stars we see quite a menagerie of possibilities."
MORE
Jupiter's Great Red Spot - a hurricane three times bigger than Earth - is blasting the planet's upper atmosphere with heat, astronomers have found. Using measurements from an infrared telescope in Hawaii, a UK and US team found evidence for temperatures as high as 1,500C - hundreds of degrees warmer than anywhere else on the planet. They suggest the hotspot is created by thunderous soundwaves "breaking" in the thin upper reaches of the atmosphere. The research is published in Nature.
It arguably solves what planetary scientists had dubbed an "energy crisis" for gas giants like Jupiter: temperatures in their upper atmospheres soar much higher than can be explained by solar energy - especially given their vast distances from the Sun. If the mysterious heat were generated by local sources, like Jupiter's famous storm, then the conundrum would be solved - and these measurements are the first direct evidence of any such activity. Study co-author Dr Tom Stallard, from the University of Leicester, said this was a major step forward in a "20-30 year odyssey" to try and understand heat flow on Jupiter. "Ever since Voyager, we've had measurements of the temperature at the top of Jupiter's atmosphere, and it's been hot across the whole globe - from the poles, all the way to the equator," he told the BBC.
Jupiter's enormous, dramatic aurora can explain the heat in the polar regions, but for that warmth to reach the equator would require incredibly dramatic mixing, which modelling studies haven't been able to support. "There's no real excuse for it to be so hot," said Dr James O'Donoghue from Boston University, the paper's first author.
Sound and fury
This is a great step. We are now truly exploring our solar system. It is only matter of time before we will start to colonize Mars as it has abundance of water.
Inhospitable yes. But, by all the evidence, there is plenty of water. And the history of life is colonizing inhospitable places.
I'm almost sure we will find life inside Europa. Maybe tardigradesShould have landed a probe on Europa. Oh well. Maybe next mission
Inhospitable yes. But, by all the evidence, there is plenty of water. And the history of life is colonizing inhospitable places.
This is a great step. We are now truly exploring our solar system. It is only matter of time before we will start to colonize Mars as it has abundance of water.
This isn't true. There may likely be very little water if any. Mars is a very inhospitable place. NASA only wants to get your tax money.
Do you think we shouldn't go to another planet if it is inhabitable because we might take or get a disease? That's a chance we have to take. Build up an immune system or be able to come up with vaccinesInhospitable yes. But, by all the evidence, there is plenty of water. And the history of life is colonizing inhospitable places.
Have to watch out for the dreaded AGW...
Maybe we shouldn't explore after all..
We bring with us human diseases that we are imuned too..but the natives are not..
Is this a wise decision?
Do you think we shouldn't go to another planet if it is inhabitable because we might take or get a disease? That's a chance we have to take. Build up an immune system or be able to come up with vaccinesInhospitable yes. But, by all the evidence, there is plenty of water. And the history of life is colonizing inhospitable places.
Have to watch out for the dreaded AGW...
Maybe we shouldn't explore after all..
We bring with us human diseases that we are imuned too..but the natives are not..
Is this a wise decision?
Do you think we shouldn't go to another planet if it is inhabitable because we might take or get a disease? That's a chance we have to take. Build up an immune system or be able to come up with vaccinesInhospitable yes. But, by all the evidence, there is plenty of water. And the history of life is colonizing inhospitable places.
Have to watch out for the dreaded AGW...
Maybe we shouldn't explore after all..
We bring with us human diseases that we are imuned too..but the natives are not..
Is this a wise decision?
Do you think we shouldn't go to another planet if it is inhabitable because we might take or get a disease? That's a chance we have to take. Build up an immune system or be able to come up with vaccinesInhospitable yes. But, by all the evidence, there is plenty of water. And the history of life is colonizing inhospitable places.
Have to watch out for the dreaded AGW...
Maybe we shouldn't explore after all..
We bring with us human diseases that we are imuned too..but the natives are not..
Is this a wise decision?
Yep, Humanity is all about exploring and moving forward. We use science to over come such disease and we're stronger for it. This belief system that we need to be stuck in the past makes me fucking angry.
