‘Welcome to Jupiter!’ NASA’s Juno space probe arrives at giant planet

NASA says it has received a signal from 540 million miles across the solar system, 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.

The probe had to conduct a tricky maneuver to slow down enough to allow it to be pulled into orbit: It fired its main engine for 35 minutes, effectively hitting the brakes to slow the spacecraft by about 1,212 miles per hour (542 meters per second).

“NASA did it again,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator.

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“We’re there, we’re in orbit. We conquered Jupiter.”

“Through tones Juno sang to us and it was a song of perfection,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno Project Manager, referring to the audio signal the probe sent to indicate it was in orbit.

The Juno team celebrates at Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Juno was launched nearly five years ago on a mission to study Jupiter’s composition and evolution. It’s the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter since Galileo. Galileo was deliberately crashed into Jupiter on September 21, 2003, to protect one of its discoveries – a possible ocean beneath Jupiter’s moon Europa.

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“Preliminary looks are that the spacecraft is performing well ,” said Guy Beutelschies, Director of Interplanetary Missions at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, the company that built the spacecraft.

Steve Levin, Juno Project Scientist, looked ahead to turning on the probe’s instruments again, after they were turned off in preparation for the tricky orbit maneuver.

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“What I’m really looking forward to is getting up close and personal with Jupiter,” he said.

Jupiter's northernmost cyclone, seen to the right along the bottom edge of image, was captured by Juno.

This jack-o-lantern-esque view of Jupiter is a mosaic of images taken by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The bright spots represent Jupiter's internal heat escaping through holes in the planet's massive cloud cover.

Part of Jupiter's southern equatorial region can be seen in this image captured by Juno's JunoCam imager. But it's flipped to show the expanse of Jupiter's atmosphere, with the poles to the left and right, rather than top to bottom.

In this image captured by Juno, six cyclones remain stable at Jupiter's south pole. A small cyclone, seen at the bottom right in yellow, has recently joined the party.

An artist's impression of a collision between a young Jupiter and a massive, still-forming protoplanet in the early solar system.

These dramatic swirls on Jupiter are atmospheric features. Clouds swirl around a circular feature in a jet stream region.

Is that a dolphin on Jupiter? No, but it definitely looks like one. It's actually a cloud that looks like it's swimming through cloud bands along the South Temperate Belt.

This composite image, derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter, shows the central cyclone at the planet's north pole and the eight cyclones that encircle it.

This striking image of Jupiter was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant.

Algorithmic-based scaling and coloring reveal a vivid look at the Great Red Spot in July 2017.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm with a 10,000-mile-wide cluster of clouds in July 2017.

Color enhancements offer a detailed look into the Great Red Spot.

NASA configured this comparison of its own image of Earth with an image of Jupiter taken by astronomer Christopher Go.

This artist's concept shows the pole-to-pole orbits of the NASA's Juno spacecraft at Jupiter.

This image shows Jupiter's south pole, as seen by NASA's Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color and stereographic projection.

An even closer view of Jupiter's clouds obtained by NASA's Juno spacecraft.

Jupiter's north polar region comes into view as NASA's Juno spacecraft approaches the giant planet. This view of Jupiter was taken when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away during its first of 36 orbital flybys of the planet.

This infrared image gives an unprecedented view of the southern aurora of Jupiter, as captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on August 27, 2016. Juno's unique polar orbit provides the first opportunity to observe this region of the gas-giant planet in detail.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back its first photo of Jupiter, left, since entering into orbit around the planet. The photo is made from some of the first images taken by JunoCam and shows three of the massive planet's four largest moons: from left, Io, Europa and Ganymede.

An illustration depicts NASA's Juno spacecraft entering Jupiter's orbit. Juno will study Jupiter from a polar orbit, coming about 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) from the cloud tops of the gas giant.

This was the final view of Jupiter taken by Juno before the on-board instruments were powered down to prepare for orbit. The image was taken June 29, 2016, while the spacecraft was 3.3 million miles (5.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured images of Jupiter's auroras on the poles of the gas giant. The observations were supported by measurements taken by Juno.

This artist rendering shows Juno orbiting Jupiter.

Jupiter and the gaseous planet's four largest moons -- Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto -- are seen in a photo taken by Juno on June 21, 2016. The spacecraft was 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) from the planet.

Juno made a flyby of Earth in October 2014. This trio of images was taken by the spacecraft's JunoCam.

Three Lego figurines are flying aboard the Juno spacecraft. They represent the Roman god Jupiter; his wife, Juno; and Galileo Galilei, the scientist who discovered Jupiter's four largest moons on January 7, 1610.

Jupiter was 445 million miles (716 million kilometers) from Earth when Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5, 2011. But the probe traveled a total distance of 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to reach Jupiter, making a flyby of Earth to help pick up speed.

Technicians use a crane to lower Juno onto a stand where the spacecraft was loaded with fuel for its mission.

Technicians test the three massive solar arrays that power the Juno spacecraft. In this photo taken February 2, 2011, each solar array is unfurled at a Lockheed Martin Space Systems facility in Denver.

Juno, meet Jupiter

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Gas giant

object hits Jupiter space orig bb vstan bpb_00004816.jpg

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The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is a huge ball of gas 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive than our planet.

Researchers think it was the first planet to form and that it holds clues to how the solar system evolved.

Spacecraft have been to Jupiter before. But scientists still are puzzled by the gas giant.

What’s going on under Jupiter’s dense clouds? Does it have a solid core? How much water is in its atmosphere? And how deep are those colorful bands and that mysterious giant red spot?

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Juno will help answer those questions by looking at Jupiter’s interior. The spacecraft will orbit the poles and try to dodge the planet’s most hazardous radiation belts. To protect the spacecraft from the radiation, Juno has a shielded electronics vault.

At a press conference following the probe’s successful arrival in orbit around Jupiter, NASA showed a video shot by Juno on its approach of Jupiter’s moons traveling around the planet, capturing for the first time the movement of objects around a celestial body.

“In all of history, we’ve never really been able to see the motion of any heavenly body against another,” Bolton told CNN, describing Jupiter and its moons as a “mini solar system.”

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“You have multiple moons going around Jupiter, and each one is going around at a different speed, based on its distance away from the planet. This is the king of our solar system and its disciples going around it.

It’s very significant, we’re finally able to see with real video, real pictures, this motion that we’ve only been able to imagine it until today.”

In 1975 a research group led by Princeton professor Gerard O'Neill conducted a 10 week study of future space colonies. The NASA-sponsored research and the paper born of it was given to artists Rick Guidice and Don Davis, commissioned to illustrate the fantastical and as yet unrealized concepts.

O'Neill's team settled on three potential designs for the future space stations: the Bernal Sphere, the Toroidal Colony (pictured) and the Cylindrical Colony. Potential capacity ranged from 10,000 people to one million, and featured circular designs which rotated to generate artificial gravity.

The Cylindrical Colony, the most spacious of O'Neill's concepts, had huge windows fitted to allow light to filter through to the landscapes within. The design, later dubbed the 'O'Neill Cylinder', was riffed on in Christopher Nolan's intergalactic blockbuster "Interstellar" forty years later.

The Bernal Sphere was first proposed by John Desmond Bernal as far back as 1929, with O'Neill's team adapting the half-century old idea. Shrunk down to 500 meters wide they proposed a highly-curved living surface that featured a "crystal palace" for agriculture and light reflected in via windows near the poles.

O'Neill in a paper presented to NASA uses 1990 as a hypothetical start date for a space colony, with the team drawing up a number of potential costs for construction and transportation -- even the volume of livestock each station would need to ship in.

Rick Guidice's painting of a cutaway of the Bernal Sphere also shows some of the huge solar arrays required to power the station and its rotation.

Despite the futuristic technology required to put such a massive structure in space, all of the artwork from Guidice and Davis shows lush green landscapes -- a far cry from the reality of the International Space Station today.

O'Neill suggests that the compact living area of the Bernal Sphere could be offset with separate agricultural modules, spacious enough for industrial-scale farming.

Don Davis' illustration of a Cylindrical Colony imagines what a solar eclipse would look like from space, featuring two columns of land hidden from the sun altogether experiencing and night time.

Davis depicts a construction crew piecing together a Bernal Sphere complete with houses, grass and rivers, seemingly unscathed by the vacuum of space.

The Cylindrical Colony was never envisaged a solitary structure, instead orbiting with a partner.

A Bernal Sphere with tilted arrays to maximize exposure to the sun.

An exterior view of a Toroidal colony, featuring a giant tilted mirror providing sunlight to the interior surface of the ring.

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Spinning probe

Mars rover approaching

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Juno is a spinning, robotic probe as wide as a basketball court.

It will circle Jupiter 37 times for 20 months, diving down to about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers) above the planet’s dense clouds.

The seven science instruments on board will study Jupiter’s auroras and help scientists better understand the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

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An onboard color camera called JunoCam will take “spectacular close-up, color images” of Jupiter, according to NASA. The space agency is asking the public to help decide where to point the camera.

Three 1.5-inch Lego figurines are also on board Juno. One is a likeness of Galileo Galilei – the scientist who discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons. The other two represent the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno. They were included to inspire children to study science and math.

Juno’s main spacecraft body measures 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) tall and 11.5 feet in diameter. But with its three solar panels open, it spans about 66 feet (20 meters). For comparison, an NBA basketball court is 50 feet wide and 94 feet long.

Jupiter was 445 million miles (716 million kilometers) from Earth when Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 5, 2011. But the probe has traveled a total distance of 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to reach the gaseous planet, making a flyby of Earth to help pick up speed.

“After a 1.7 billion mile journey, we hit our burn targets within one second, on a target that was just tens of kilometers large,” said Nybakken. “That’s how well the Juno spacecraft performed tonight.”

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The Juno mission ends on February 20, 2018, when Juno is expected to crash into Jupiter.