Astro Blog

Source:   By Kenneth Chang, New York Times Excerpt: After traveling for five years and nearly 1.8 billion miles, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will announce its arrival at Jupiter with the simplest of radio signals: a three-second beep. ...Juno’s mission is to explore the enigmas beneath the cloud tops of Jupiter. How far down does the Big Red Spot storm that has swirled for centuries extend? What is inside the solar system’s largest planet? ...“One of the primary goals of Juno is to learn the recipe for solar systems,” said Scott Bolton, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio who is the principal investigator for the $1.1 billion mission. “How do you make the solar system? How do you make the planets in our solar system?”... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/science/nasa-jupiter-juno.html   See also  video  http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000004498333/juno-piercing-jupiters-clouds.html

Source:   By Bryan Lufkin, Scientific American Excerpt:  It will be the first spacecraft to probe deep below the planet’s thick cloud decks. ...the NASA orbiter will collect data that could elucidate the planet's origins and evolution, gather details about its long-lived storm (the Great Red Spot) and send back the highest-resolution color images of Jupiter to date. Jupiter was apparently born from the leftover gas and dust of the primordial nebula that formed our sun, yet exactly how that birth occurred, or even whether the planet has a solid core, is unknown. ...the NASA team has programmed the sensor-laden Juno to measure the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere and to map its gravitational and magnetic fields. The craft's microwave radiometer will also “see” about 550 kilometers below the clouds covering Jupiter's surface. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-s-juno-spacecraft-is-scheduled-to-arrive-at-jupiter-on-july-4/