JUNO REACHES JUPITER!!!! Importance of Mission

JUNO into Jupiter's orbit, Credits to NASA

Jupiter is going to be uncovered. A space probe, JUNO, launched by NASA in 2011 sets into orbit of Jupiter which accounted a great day for science. Aren't you excited?

So why is Jupiter so important?

Curiosity kills the cat, which was killing us previously! Jupiter is the fifth planet in the Solar System and the largest of all the currently known planets. It is massive and its gigantic structure can be figured out in a way of comparison with the other planets in this way: The mass of the Jupiter is more than 2 and a half times of the mass of all the planets combined. Or it can be viewed as the mass of the Jupiter equals the mass of 318 Earths, and the volume equals 1321 Earths.

Jupiter with its Red Eye

According to the readings that we had previously, Jupiter's upper atmosphere is approximately 90% Hydrogen and approximately 10% Helium. This makes absolute sense, it's a gas giant remember?

Day is saved, thanks to JUNO!

JUNO's Infographic by NASA

This probe named JUNO is powered by Solar Energy and used a technique known as Gravity Assist where a probe takes the assistance of the gravity of planetary bodies to form a trajectory. This boosts it speed and accelerates it further to leave the attractive force of gravity of certain planets. This happens when the tangential acceleration gets larger than the centripetal acceleration. Just as if you swing a bucket full of water over your head, the water never spills, but when you release the bucket, it goes straight in the direction of your release. * This Gravity Assist technique is a fuel saver!

Related: Top reasons for Juno's Success

JUNO's mission was to stretch the hands of researches far away from Earth to this unique structure and give us some of the striking and scintillating features of this mighty marble giant. The satellites which were previously sent did not had the mission to deeply analyse this gas giant but researchers made it a part of their previous programs which, therefore, could not successfully tell the scientists what exactly Jupiter is composed of. Those probes like The New Horizon, Voyager 1 and 2, did a flyby of Jupiter but were never able to research more deeply into Jupiter. While, on the other hand, JUNO is a probe designed to look into the Jupiter to see its alienated structure. And hopefully, this mission will give us many answers to previously asked questions.

Reaching Jupiter

JUNO reached Jupiter on 4th of July 2016 after a journey of five years giving world a shock and created a sense of excitement in the minds of scientists and people who love studying about them.

Diane Brown, a project manager from NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) says:

"To know we can go to bed tonight not worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow, is just amazing."

This was one the hardest mission, as said by one of the officials of NASA, which gave them a headache in stabilizing the mission and somehow making it a success which now they did it.

What will it answer?

As you all know that Jupiter looks like a marble because it has a mixed composition of gases absorbing different spectrum of light which gives it a unique appearance. This mission will give us many answers which seemed to be boggling in our heads for a very long time. It will give us data which will tell us:

• About the formation of Jupiter;
• Oxygen to Hydrogen ratio;
• Abundance of water;
• Estimation of Jupiter's core mass;
• Mapping magnetic field of Jupiter to understand and know how deep in this Jupiter is this field created;
• Mapping gravitational field of Jupiter which could tell us about its physical properties;
• Atmospheric variation and climate;
• Learning about the Jupiter's Auroras and Magnetosphere.

So, yeah it will get interesting in the near future and we'll know if there are aliens on Jupiter, so we may contact them and share our food with each other. Just kidding! More news to come, related to the building and importance of Juno.

Share this and let your family and friends know about this great achievement.

Zain Ul Mustafa

Cakes, conspiracies, and computers are my daily pills.

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