Juno then entered an elliptical orbit not around Jupiter’s equator, but looping from pole to pole. On July 4, 2016, as Juno hurtled toward its target, a Jupiter Orbit Insertion (JOI) engine burn reduced its speed by 1,200 mph (1,950 km/h), allowing the probe to thread a fine needle between the planet and its radiation belts. This yielded an 8,800-mph (14,000 km/h) speed boost. Its convoluted 59-month trek carried it initially beyond the orbit of Mars, but a pair of maneuvers in August and September 2012 redirected it back past Earth for a gravitational slingshot maneuver in October 2013. 5, 2011, Juno voyaged 1.74 billion miles (2.8 billion kilometers) to reach Jupiter. Launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Aug. But a worldwide shortage of plutonium-238 nuclear fuel coupled with advances in solar-cell technology made it both necessary and possible for Juno to utilize the Sun’s energy to power itself. All previous craft that had voyaged that deep into the solar system relied on nuclear generators. With its windmill-like trio of 29-foot-long (9 meters) solar arrays fully unfurled, the probe spans about the same area as a basketball court. For power, it relies on arrays of solar panels - a first for a spacecraft at Jupiter, where sunlight is about 4 percent as strong as at Earth. Juno is the most advanced spacecraft yet to visit Jupiter, brimming with nine science instruments, including infrared and ultraviolet sensors, a radiometer and magnetometer, and energetic particle detectors. Our knowledge has multiplied since the dawn of the Space Age, thanks to NASA’s Pioneer, Voyager, and Galileo probes, which surveyed the giant planet between 19. But before the invention of the telescope, we knew little of its nature, including its four large Galilean moons (named for their discoverer, the Italian polymath Galileo Galilei) and its most striking atmospheric feature, the roiling Great Red Spot. The largest and most massive planet in the solar system, Jupiter has been observed since antiquity. And the craft’s scientific toolkit has made it as much a force to be reckoned with as the goddess herself. Its onboard camera, JunoCam, has turned Jupiter from a planet into an objet d’art, capturing spectacular planetscapes with sprawling storms.

This robotic Juno has answered many longstanding questions and uncovered new riddles to challenge us. For the last six years, though, a spacecraft bearing Juno’s name has watched Jupiter from orbit, stripping away its secrets and furnishing new insights into its interior and evolution. Like its mythical namesake, the planet Jupiter guards its secrets with jealous pride, its bulk swaddled in thick clouds. But Juno always saw through her faithless husband’s philandering to reveal his every misdeed. It was said that Jupiter conjured fog to hide his illicit liaisons from his wife. Whenever Jupiter, thunderbolt-wielding lord of the gods in ancient Roman myth, misbehaved with the ladies, there was one person he most feared: his long-suffering yet ferocious wife, the goddess Juno.

Nasa picture of the day jupiter