NASA Spacecraft Nears Rendezvous With Jupiter
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jupiter takes center stage with the arrival next week of a NASA spacecraft.
The solar-powered Juno spacecraft is on the final leg of a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile trip to the biggest planet in the solar system.
As Juno approaches Jupiter late Monday, it will fire its main rocket engine to slow down and slip into orbit around the planet for a year.
It's designed to peek through Jupiter's thick, swirling clouds and map the planet from the inside out.
Jupiter is a gas giant made up mostly of hydrogen and helium unlike rocky Earth and its neighbor Mars. The fifth planet from the sun likely formed first and it could hold clues to how the solar system developed.
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