NASA recently launched Juno, a small, solar-powered spacecraft designed to orbit Jupiter. It's goal? To discover more about how the solar system was formed. Jupiter, as the oldest and most massive planet, holds a lot of information about the formation of the planets, but we have little knowledge of the planet itself. Only one other spacecraft, the Galileo, has ever orbited Jupiter. It's easy to see we have a lot to learn.
Juno is expected to arrive in 2016, and complete an estimated 33 orbits before its system gives out. In that time, it will attempt to answer questions about the formation of Jupiter, whether water exists on the planet, what exactly is happening beneath the atmosphere, and what's up with the magnetism of the planet. It's a big job for one little spacecraft.
In less than one day, Juno will cover the distance from the Earth to the moon. It then has another 1,740 million miles to go until it reaches its destination. It astounds me that in such a short time, we have moved from walking on the moon to sending solar-powered spacecraft to study planets billions of miles away. With so much being discovered about our universe, astrophysics is an ever-expanding field. What will the next revolution be?
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