Nasa’s Juno spacecraft has captured the first close-up images of Jupiter. The Guardian reports the $1.1 billion probe went into orbit last July on a mission to get images from Jupiter and learn about its impact on other planets in the solar system. “We were all jumping up and down with excitement when the images came down,” said Fran Bagenal, a planetary space physicist at the University of Colorado.
Bagenal has been a part of the Juno mission for more than a decade. “You’ve got to be patient, but the rewards are fantastic,” Bagenal added. The spacecraft survived an almost six-year voyage across space to reach Jupiter where it went under the planet’s radiation belts and swept into an orbit that loops over the planet’s north and south poles. READ MORE
