Juno Mission to Jupiter Launching from Earth in 2011, the Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in 2016 to study

the giant planet from an elliptical, polar orbit. Juno will repeatedly dive between the planet and its intense belts of charged particle radiation, coming only 5,000 kilometers (about 3,000 miles) from the cloud tops at closest approach. Juno's primary goal is to improve our understanding of Jupiter's formation and evolution. The spacecraft will spend a year investigating the planet's origins, interior structure, deep atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's study of Jupiter will help us to understand the history of our own solar system and provide new insight into how planetary systems form and develop in our galaxy and beyond. Juno's principal investigator is Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute in San

( NASA's Juno spacecraft passes in front of Jupiter in this artist's depiction. Juno, the second mission in NASA's New Frontiers program, will improve our understanding of the solar system by advancing studies of the origin and evolution of Jupiter. )

Antonio, Texas. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, Colo., is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency, Rome, is contributing an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment. A spacecraft destined to become the fastest manmade object in history is set for launch on Friday on a mission that will end in a high-speed crash into the largest planet in the solar system. Nasa's $1bn Juno satellite is bound for Jupiter on a mission to peer through the clouds of the Jovian atmosphere and deep into the planet's interior. The 3.5-tonne probe is due to blast off on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 4.34pm BST (11.34am local time) on a 2,800 million kilometre voyage that will take it far out into the solar system before looping back around the Earth in a slingshot manoeuvre that will hurl the spacecraft towards its target. Before Juno arrives at its destination, rocket motors will fire up and set the satellite spinning like a three-bladed propeller so that each of its scientific instruments can get a regular and clear view of the planet. The five-year journey will bring Juno in over the north pole of Jupiter to begin the first of 33 orbits at speeds of up to 160,000kph. To minimise damage from Jupiter's intense radiation fields, the spacecraft will follow a highly elliptical orbit that goes far out into space before returning low over the north and south poles. The spinning satellite will photograph Jupiter's spectacular aurora and map its intense magnetic and gravitational fields for a year in a bid to understand the planet's formation and the inner workings that make it one of the most extraordinary bodies in the solar system. "Juno will help us understand how the solar system formed, and how all the planets formed, from the solar nebula some 4.5bn years ago," saidJack Connerney, deputy principal investigator on the Juno mission at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland. "After the formation of the sun, the vast majority of mass left over in the solar system resides in Jupiter. The planet is so massive that none of the material that was originally there could escape its gravity, so Jupiter is effectively a sample of the primitive solar nebula that all the planets formed from."

A major question Juno will seek to answer is the nature of the dynamo that generates Jupiter's powerful magnetic field, which is 20,000 times stronger than that of the Earth. On our home planet, the magnetic field is produced by a spinning core of molten iron. "Jupiter's magnetic field may be generated by the layer of liquid metallic hydrogen in the planet's interior, but another school of thought says it may be generated from a layer of molecular hydrogen above that. With a good map of the magnetic field, we should be able to tell which it is," Connerney told the Guardian. Other instruments aboard Juno will compile detailed maps of Jupiter's gravitational field to reveal how heavier elements are distributed throughout the planet, and confirm whether or not it has a sold rocky core. Stowed away on the spacecraft will be a plaque dedicated to Galileo Galilei, who discovered moons in orbit around Jupiter in 1610, and three Lego figures of Galileo, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife, Juno. The electronics aboard Juno are encased in a titanium vault designed to protect components from high levels of radiation, but even with this shielding, the spacecraft is expected to sustain serious damage after a year in Jupiter's orbit. Any loss of control of Juno could leave the spacecraft in danger of crashing into Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, where future missions may look for signs of extraterrestrial life, so Nasacontrollers have developed a final act for the mission. "You hear of Nasa missions that go on and on, but to be sure we don't contaminate the surface of Europa, we are going to send Juno crashing into Jupiter," Connerney said. "I think we will communicate with Juno until the last moment." The Great Red Spot on Jupiter's flank is a hurricane twice the size of Earth that has raged for 300 years. The storms that build on the planet produce winds up to 600kph and flashes of lightning 100 times brighter than those on Earth. The gas giant is 1,300 times larger than Earth and made almost entirely of hydrogen. It carries more than twice the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined. The intense gravitational forces inside the planet compress the gas to such an extent it forms a vast subsurface sea of liquid metallic hydrogen that reaches more than 25,000km deep. Around 10% of Jupiter is helium with trace levels of heavier elements. The core may be solid rock.

Information regarding magnetic field of Jupiter.

Juno's magnetometers will measure Jupiter's magnetic field with extraordinary precision and give us a detailed picture of what the field looks like, both around the planet and deep within," says Goddard's Jack Connerney, the mission's deputy principal investigator and head of the magnetometer team. "This will be the first time we've mapped the magnetic field all around Jupiter-it will be the most complete map of its kind ever obtained about any planet with an active dynamo, except, of course, our Earth." The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for NASA. Scheduled for launch in 2011, Juno is the second mission in NASA's New Frontiers program. The mission will improve our understanding of the solar system by advancing studies of the origin and evolution of Jupiter. The spacecraft will carry nine instruments to investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter's intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the planet's auroras. "The magnetometers play a unique and important role in Juno's investigation of the formation and evolution of Jupiter," says Juno's principal investigator, Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "They provide one of the ways that Juno will see deep inside the giant planet, and this will help us understand how and where Jupiter's powerful magnetic field is generated." The Juno magnetometers will study Jupiter's powerful magnetic field, which is nearly 20,000 times as strong as Earth's. The field is generated deep within the planet's atmosphere, where the intense pressure compresses hydrogen gas into an electrically conductive fluid. Fluid motion within the planet drives electric currents in this liquid hydrogen, and these currents generate the magnetic field. If a map were drawn of the magnetic field lines running between Jupiter's north and south poles, the region of space filled by the lines (called the magnetosphere) would be enormous. Jupiter's magnetosphere extends up to 3 million kilometers (nearly 2 million miles) toward the sun and as far as Saturn's orbit in the other direction. "From a distance, Jupiter's magnetic field has two poles, north and south, like Earth's. But looking closer, below Jupiter's surface, the magnetic field is thought to be quite complex and tangled," says Connerney. "Juno will give us a detailed picture

of the magnetic field extending down to the surface of the dynamo, or engine, that generates it." Jupiter's powerful magnetic environment also creates the brightest auroras in the solar system, as charged particles get trapped by the field and rain down into the atmosphere. Juno will directly sample the charged particles and magnetic fields near Jupiter's poles for the first time, while simultaneously observing the auroras at ultraviolet wavelengths of light. These investigations will greatly improve the understanding of this remarkable phenomenon and of similar magnetic objects, such as young stars that have their own planetary systems. "With Juno, we will learn much more about the structure and evolution of Jupiter, and this will help us understand our own solar system," says Connerney. "But astronomers have now found many other giant planets outside our solar system. What we learn about Jupiter also will help us understand the planets orbiting other stars." Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, Colo., is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency in Rome is contributing an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.

Juno will carry eight instruments to study Jupiter's internal structure and gravity field, measure water on the planet and ammonia within the atmosphere, as well as map its powerful magnetic field and observe its iconic auroras.

juno's three-winged solar array folds up into a compact unit for launch aboard the Atlas V 551 rocket and will unfurl after being jettisoned from the rocket and reaching orbit. The 8-foot arrays will generate a power output of about 14 kilowatts at Earth's distance from the sun, but will provide a minuscule 400 watts at Jupiter, where the sun is 25 times weaker.

At dawn on July 27 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41, the payload fairing, holding the Juno spacecraft, arrives at the launch pad to be mounted atop the Atlas rocket stacked in the Vertical Integration Facility.

The first stage of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is lifted into the Vertical Integration Facility at Launch Complex 41 on June 13. It will take Juno five years to reach Jupiter and begin its year of research work, but the launch team will know about an hour after launch if all their work paid off.