“Jupiter is a planet on steroids,” said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the South-west Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. Juno is not the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter but Nasa says its orbit will bring it closer than its predecessor, Galileo, which launched in 1989. If it does manage to orbit, Juno will circle the gas giant for 20 months. “The amount of water inside Jupiter is crucial to understanding how the solar system formed because it is crucial to understanding how Jupiter formed,” said Levin. Photo: AFPMiami: Juno, an unmanned Nasa spacecraft, is barrelling toward Jupiter on a $1.1 billion mission to circle the biggest planet in the solar system and shed new light on the origin of our planetary neighbourhood.

Source: Mint July 03, 2016 11:37 UTC