NASA, America's federal space agency, announced Monday that it is officially moving forward on a mission to conduct an unprecedented, in-depth study of Jupiter called Juno. The Juno mission will placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure in 2016, [video].The Juno spacecraft is scheduled to launch aboard an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in August 2011, reaching Jupiter in 2016 [video]. The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter 32 times, skimming about 3,000 miles over the planet's cloud tops for approximately one year. The mission will be the first solar powered spacecraft designed to operate despite the great distance from the sun.
The contractor for Juno is Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Juno is the second spacecraft designed under NASA’s New Frontiers Program. The first was the Pluto New Horizons mission, launched in January 2006 is now past Juipter. It is scheduled to reach Pluto’s moon Charon in 2015.
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