NASA sent out the spacecraft Juno on 5 August 2011 from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas V rocket towards the largest planet of the solar system, Jupiter. It arrived at the gas giant on 4 July 2016. Now Juno’s in the process of probing the many mysteries that Jupiter hides in it’s thick layers of hydrogen and helium rich atmosphere.

Juno will fly past the planet for 37 times using instruments on board to take measurements of the gravitational and magnetic structure of Jupiter. The JunoCam is going to take the first color photographs of the planet on it’s elliptical orbits over the poles of the planet.

Scientists hope to find out more about the core of the planet and the atmosphere from the observations that Juno sends back. This data will be invaluable in figuring out just how the planet was formed and held together.

The knowledge will contribute to our understanding of the formation of the rest of the solar system as well. Eventually Juno will de-orbit in 2018 and burn up in Jupiter’s atmosphere so as not to contaminate any of Jupiter’s moons.

Considering that in Greek mythology Juno was Jupiter’s wife, it makes interesting reading that in this science project Juno is probing Jupiter’s unknown secrets. Just like how a nosy wife wants to meddle in her husband’s business!