The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Friday launched the billion-dollar solar-powered spacecraft Juno on a five-year journey to Jupiter in search of what makes up the solar system's biggest planet. The unmanned satellite observatory launched into space aboard a 60-meter tall Atlas V rocket, taking off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1625 GMT. “Ignition and liftoff on the Atlas V with Juno on a trek to Jupiter, a planetary piece of the puzzle on the beginning of our solar system,” said a NASA television commentator. Once it arrives in July 2016, the spacecraft will orbit the poles of Jupiter, which has more than twice the mass of all planets in the solar system combined and is believed to be the first planet that took shape around the Sun. The $1.1 billion spacecraft is NASA's first mission there since it launched Galileo in 1989, and it aims for 30 orbits over a period of one year. Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any other NASA spacecraft and will be the first to undertake a polar orbit of the planet, said Scott Bolton, the principal investigator and scientist for Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “One of the primary goals of Juno,” Bolton said “is [probing] the origin of Jupiter and the origin of our solar system.” Bolton said “Juno is set up to learn about that early part of the solar system and learn how Jupiter formed and by measuring the ingredients, we are really looking for the recipe of planet formation.” Juno is part of a series of NASA's new planetary science missions, to be followed by Grail, which is headed to the moon in September, and the Mars Science Laboratory set to take off in November. “These missions are designed to tackle some of the toughest questions in planetary science, all about our origin and the evolution of the solar system,” said Jim Green, the director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington.
