NASA’s Juno Remains On Course For Jupiter

By  //  December 9, 2012

Earth Flyby In Oct. 2013

BREVARD COUNTY • CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – NASA’s Juno spacecraft has successfully executed a second deep space burn keeping it on track for its flight to Jupiter.

The Juno spacecraft remains on course to reach Jupiter by 2016. (Image courtesy NASA/JPL)

The maneuver occurred in September when Juno was more than 298 million miles away from Earth and is the second burn for the spacecraft’s engines in less than a month.

Preliminary telemetry from the spacecraft indicates that the burn was completed as planned.

A more complete report on the maneuver was made available in October, after the Juno mission team had an opportunity to analyze the spacecraft’s maneuver performance.

Juno is on a five-year mission to explore Jupiter after launching from an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in August 2011.

It will travel more than 2.8 billion miles and use a gravity assist from Earth during a flyby in October 2013 to slingshot the spacecraft toward Jupiter.

By 2016, Juno will reach Jupiter and begin to map the giant planet’s polar areas using infrared and microwave instrumentation.

It also will measure thermal radiation emitted from Jupiter which will help provide information for scientists about the planet’s composition and origins.

The $1.1 billion Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.