NASA's Juno probe completes 5-year journey to Jupiter

NASA's Juno probe successfully enters Jupiters orbit, a moment that engineers said was 'make or break' for the mission.

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Juno spacecraft safely entered Jupiter’s orbit early Tuesday after completing a five-year journey across 1.8 billion miles of deep space.

The spacecraft began firing its main engines at 8:18 pm local time Monday to slow itself down so it could be captured by Jupiter’s gravity.

Thirty-five minutes later, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — Mission Control — received confirmation: Juno's attempt to throw itself into orbit had been successful.

"All stations on Juno co-ord, we have the tone for burn cut-off on Delta B," Juno Mission Control announced, followed by: "Roger Juno, welcome to Jupiter."

The $1.1 billion Juno will now use its sensors to explore Jupiter for clues about how our solar system formed billions of years ago.

“If we want to understand how planets form and how solar systems form, we really have to start with Jupiter,” said Steve Levin, a Juno project scientist.

Juno will now take a series of risky dives beneath Jupiter’s intense radiation belts where it will study the gas giant from as close as 2,600 miles over the planet's cloud tops. Galileo, the last mission to the gas giant that ended in 2003, spent most of its mission five times farther away than Juno will get.

Scientists warned that the project was risky and might not succeed. Juno will be the first spacecraft to study Jupiter from such a close distance.

“We have a huge, incredible science payload of remote sensors that are going to tell us what’s inside the planet from outside and you can't do that from a long way away,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno’s project manager.

"NASA did it again," said Scott Bolton, one of the scientists in charge of the project.

NASA released a time-lapse video taken by Juno as it approached Jupiter over the past few weeks, but close-up images will not be released before August 27.

Getting so much closer allows the probe to peer beneath Jupiter's thick clouds with sensors designed to measure its gravity, magnetic fields and water content.

This should give scientists an indication as to whether the planet harbors a solid core, something planetary scientists have theorized to exist but have never confirmed. It will also tell scientists if Jupiter formed far away from the sun in colder temperatures or if it formed closer to the sun in a relatively warmer environment.

Juno will stay in orbit until February 2018, when NASA will purposefully plummet the spacecraft into Jupiter.

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NASA's Juno probe reaches Jupiter

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From left to right: Geoffrey Yoder, Michael Watkins, Rick Nybakken, Richard Cook and Jan Chodas celebrate in Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the solar-powered Juno spacecraft goes into orbit around Jupiter on July 4.  AP

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This video released by NASA shows the view from the Juno spacecraft as it approaches the Jupiter system. The planet's moons can be seen orbiting the gas giant.