Science Break:
NASA will celebrate July 4 with the arrival of the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter. (if all goes well) The Juno spacecraft will end its nearly five-year journey through space and embark on a mission to study the planet like never before.
The spacecraft must lock on to Jupiter into what’s called a polar orbit. This is the most dangerous part of the entire Juno mission, and is what NASA will be watching instead of fireworks tonight. As Juno approaches its destination tonight the tremendous gravitational pull of Jupiter will accelerate the spacecraft to blazing speeds of more than 150,000 mph, making Juno one of the fastest human-made objects ever built.
After reaching a max speed of 165,000 mph, fast enough to fly around Earth in 9 minutes, Juno will slam on the breaks by firing its engines.
The engines will fire for 35 minutes straight, burning through 17,600 pounds of fuel in the process. Should anything go wrong, the spacecraft will blast past Jupiter, into deep space with no chance of return. The engine burn will start at 11:18pm ET tonight.
(click image to expand)
The above photo was taken by Juno on the 29th before its instruments were powered down in preparation for Jupiter orbit insertion. Juno captured this image at a distance of 3.3 million miles from Jupiter.