NASA's Juno spacecraft to touch Jupiter's farthest point in orbit!

New Delhi: Merely a month after making it successfully into the orbit of the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, NASA and JPL's Juno spacecraft is already nearing a turning point.

July 31st at 12:41 pm PDT, will witness Juno reaching the farthest point in its orbit of Jupiter, known as 'apojove', for the first time, which is 5 million miles (8.1 million kilometers) from the giant planet.

Once, Juno touches that point, the planet's gravitational grip on the spacecraft will push it, due to which, it will begin falling back toward Jupiter for another pass, this time with its scientific eyes wide open.

The spacecraft is currently executing the first of two long orbits prior to beginning its science mission. Each capture orbit is nearly two months long -- quite the wait for the mission's eager team of scientists -- but it's nothing compared to the long wait the team endured on the trek to Jupiter.

"For five years we've been focused on getting to Jupiter. Now we're there, and we're concentrating on beginning dozens of flybys of Jupiter to get the science we're after," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, NASA reported.

This diagram shows the Juno spacecraft's orbits, including its two long, stretched-out capture orbits. The spacecraft's position on July 31 is indicated at left.
(Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech)