NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

The spacecraft Juno is now in orbit around Jupiter and is sending information back to Earth, NASA reports.

Juno captured the photo with Jupiter’s and its three big moons Europa, Ganymede and Io with its visible-light JunoCam instrument on Sunday (July 10).

“This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter’s extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter,” Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a statement today (July 12). “We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles.”

“JunoCam will continue to take images as we go around in this first orbit,” Juno co-investigator Candy Hansen, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said in the same statement. “The first high-resolution images of the planet will be taken on Aug. 27 when Juno makes its next close pass to Jupiter.”

The spacecraft will study Jupiter’s composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, its mass distribution, and its winds.

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NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Sends First In-orbit View

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