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NASA's Juno spacecraft nearing Jupiter

Friday, 01 July 2016 2:21 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 01 July 2016 2:23 PM ]

NASA announced Friday that Juno, a spacecraft the size of a basketball court, would come within 4,667 kilometers (2,900 miles) of the gaseous clouds that envelope Jupiter on July 4.

NASA’S Juno spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter to help scientists find out how the largest planet on the Solar System formed and evolved.

Once the spacecraft arrives, it will study the giant planet with a suite of seven science instruments and take highest-resolution images of Jupiter in history. Juno will orbit the planet more than 30 times, allowing NASA to figure out what’s going on underneath all of Jupiter’s thick clouds.

**NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this photo on June 28, 2016, at a distance of 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from Jupiter.**

The giant spacecraft is running on solar power, with three huge panels designed to face the sun during most of the mission. The wings are about eight meters long and three meters wide. Unlike Earth, which is a rocky planet, Jupiter is a huge ball of gas mostly of hydrogen and helium.

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