Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • NARRATOR: Humanity has had its eyes on Jupiter for centuries.

  • First telescopes and in recent decades eight deep space probes were used to examine the largest planet in the solar system.

  • NASA is returning to the gas giant with a large spacecraft called Juno. Equipped with unique sensors,

  • Juno will look deeper into the planet's structure than ever before to find out the

  • answers to basic questions about Jupiter's make up and how it formed.

  • Scott Bolton Principal Investigator, Juno: Juno's looking for how Jupiter

  • formed and really how planets are made in general.

  • We're very much looking for the recipe for planets.

  • The special thing about Juno is we're really looking at one of the first steps,

  • the earliest time in our solar system's history.

  • Right after the sun formed, what happened that allowed the planets to form

  • and why are the planets a slightly different composition than the sun?

  • NARRATOR: Jupiter is so far away from Earth that even when it is at its closest to us,

  • it will still take a radio signal moving at the speed of light about 34 minutes to cross the distance.

  • Getting Juno on a course to reach the distant planet is the job of an Atlas V rocket,

  • one of the largest in NASA's catalog.

  • Already been used to loft several NASA missions for the Launch Services Program,

  • including the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto.

  • Omar Baez Launch Director, Juno: It's flown as I said, 28 times, pretty challenging missions,

  • pretty challenging payloads.

  • It's got a heritage that goes back to the Atlas I in some of the components and in the upper stage,

  • so it's an evolution of a family in its current configuration and shape and form.

  • I'd say it's pretty robust.

  • NARRATOR: The alignment of Earth and Jupiter leaves the mission's managers with a limited window to launch the spacecraft.

  • John Calvert Mission Manager, Juno: Juno only has a 22-day launch window,

  • or else we're down for another 13 months until our next opportunity.

  • And so it's those kinds of challenges with making sure you do all the

  • little things necessary to maximize the opportunities you get for those 22 days.

  • NARRATOR: Even riding a powerful rocket into space will not be enough on its own to push Juno to its target.

  • The spacecraft still needs the kind of assist only a planet can provide.

  • That's why Juno will go into an orbit that will bring it past Earth two years

  • after launch and use the Earth's gravity to slingshot it out to Jupiter, arriving there in August 2016.

  • Aside from distance, Jupiter offers unique challenges to a spacecraft,

  • such as a radiation field rivaled in intensity only by the sun.

  • BOLTON: We have a box in the middle of the spacecraft that we call a vault and it's made out of

  • titanium and that shields all the electronics from the hazardous radiation.

  • We're very much an armored tank going to Jupiter.

  • NARRATOR: Just as Juno is building on the knowledge gained with past missions to Jupiter,

  • future missions will build on Juno's findings.

  • BOLTON: If we could start to understand the role that Jupiter played and how the planet formed and how

  • that eventually governed the creation of the other planets and the Earth and maybe even life itself,

  • then we know a little bit about how to look for other Earth-like planets,

  • maybe orbiting other stars and how common those might be and the roles

  • that those giant planets that we see orbiting the other stars play.

  • NARRATOR: NASA's Launch Services Program has dispatched several probes to deep space in recent years,

  • including the Opportunity and Spirit rovers on Mars, the Cassini spacecraft that is studying Saturn

  • and the New Horizons mission that is on its way to Pluto.

  • NARRATOR: The schedule does not lighten for the LSP team after Juno.

  • Along with an experimental weather satellite, missions to the moon and to Mars are set for launch this year.

  • CALVERT: Really, all these missions that LSP is involved in, that NASA's involved in, they're all

  • precursors to the bigger picture of getting humans out beyond Earth orbit, to Mars, to an asteroid.

  • NARATOR: For now, though, the team is focused on getting Juno safely on its way to Jupiter.

  • Omar Baez Launch Director, Juno: I will be celebrating when I hear that the spacecraft

  • has separated successfully and the solar arrays are out.

NARRATOR: Humanity has had its eyes on Jupiter for centuries.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it