A mission to Jupiter launched over a decade ago is about to complete its work with a fiery plunge into the planet’s depths sometime this month.
NASA’s Juno orbiter spacecraft reached Jupiter in 2016, five years after it launched from Earth. The craft was sent to the gas giant to explore Jupiter’s origins, evolution, clouds and several moons.
“The spacecraft found previously unseen networks of vast storms swirling around Jupiter’s poles, active volcanoes and lakes of lava on the tempestuous moon, Io, and answers to a decades-old question about winds on Jupiter extending hundreds of miles toward the planet’s interior,” NASA said on its website.
Juno was originally programmed to study Jupiter between 2016 and 2017, NASA said. But after 37 orbits around the Jovian system, astronomers chose to keep it running until September 2025, plunging it into Jupiter’s clouds and burning up in the atmosphere.
Or maybe not: Juno could continue to operate, sending data about Jupiter to astronomers on Earth, until it runs out of power, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in 2021.
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