NASA's billion-dollar probe began to fall freely into Jupiter

After passing the farthest point 8 million km from Jupiter, the Juno probe of the US Aeronautics Agency (NASA) is falling freely to a position close to the planet's surface.

According to Seeker, the Juno ship reached the farthest point named "apojove" in orbit around Jupiter on July 31. For the next 27 days, the solar-powered self-propelled vessel will be pulled by the planet's super-strong gravity into the cloudy atmosphere of 4,184km. This is Juno's closest Jupiter position, called "perijove".

Illustration of NASA's Juno probe flying around Jupiter orbit.(Photo: NASA).

Juno approached the giant planet on July 4 after completing 35 minutes of burning rocket engines in order to move slowly so that Jupiter's gravity sucked ships into orbit. This is the result of the 5-year journey through the solar system of Juno, from August 5, 2011.

"For 5 years, we have been focusing on Jupiter. Now when we get there, we are focusing on making planets across the planet for scientific research," Seeker quoted Scott Bolton, a researcher. Key research of the Juno project at Southwest Institute in San Antonio, USA.

Although Juno's scientific equipment was affected after entering orbit, the ship was still ready to fly to perijove on August 27. The team is planning to test the camera on Juno during this approach to test the device before starting a scientific survey deep inside Jupiter's radioactive belt.

With the cost of manufacturing a billion dollars, Juno's mission is to learn beneath Jupiter's atmosphere, including measuring the planet's magnetic field and gravity. The probe will also examine the composition and evolution of the atmosphere, thus finding out how Jupiter formed.