Juno spacecraft to make fifth science flyby over Jupiter

On Thursday, May 18, at 11pm PDT, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will make its fifth science flyby over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops.

At the time of perijove (defined as the point in Juno’s orbit when it is closest to the planet’s center), the spacecraft will have logged 63.5 million miles (102 million kilometers) in Jupiter’s orbit and will be about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops.

Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet’s cloud tops — as close as about 2,100m (3,400km) During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.