APOD: Chasing Juno (2016 Jul 12)

[APOD Robot]

Chasing Juno

Explanation: Wait for me! In 2011, NASA's robotic mission Juno launched for Jupiter from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. Last week, Juno reached Jupiter and fired internal rockets to become only the second spacecraft to orbit our Solar System's largest planet. Juno, tasked with studying the Jovian giant over the next two years, is in a highly elliptical orbit that will next bringing it near Jupiter's cloud tops in late August. Of course, the three-year-old pictured was not able to catch up to the launching rocket. Today, however, five years later, he is eight-years-old and still chasing rockets -- in that now he wants to be an astronaut.

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[Jim Leff]

The APOD from launch day, at the first link, says that "When the robotic Juno spacecraft reaches Jupiter in 2016, it will spend just over a year circling the Solar System's largest planet," but today's APOD says two years.

Why the discrepancy?

[neufer]

The APOD from launch day, at the first link, says that "When the robotic Juno spacecraft reaches Jupiter in 2016, it will spend just over a year circling the Solar System's largest planet," but today's APOD says two years.

Why the discrepancy?

Juno [is] tasked with studying the jovian giant over the next two years but it probably won't be fully operational until November 2016 and will crash into Jupiter in February 2018 (i.e., after just over a year of operations).

[heehaw]

I'm just a kid again, doing what I did again, singing a song!

[Boomer12k]

Too cute....

I would move to Mars... but the neighbors are too close...
:---[===] *

[OzRattler]

One of the more thought provoking images. What else will the eight year old see before his time is up?

[FLPhotoCatcher]

Clicking on "jovian giant" takes you to "404 The cosmic object you are looking for has disappeared beyond the event horizon."
And why is "jovian" not capitalized? It should be... Or am I missing something?

[bystander]

Clicking on "jovian giant" takes you to "404 The cosmic object you are looking for has disappeared beyond the event horizon."
And why is "jovian" not capitalized? It should be... Or am I missing something?

Changed the link to https://www.nasa.gov/jupiter instead of https://www.nasa.gov/Jupiter. Don't know why, but only the lower case version works.

edit: Oh, and I capitalized Jovian.