 Half a billion kilometers from the Sun there's an oblate spheroid in orbit around it and we just put a spacecraft there in order to study it just a few weeks ago. Now by studying it we think that not only are we going to learn more about the planet itself, we're going to learn about the solar system and potentially our origins here on Earth. And this is your space pod for July 27, 2016. It's an incredible place, completely alien to anything that you may be able to experience here on Earth. And you know the name of that planet we call it Jupiter, the largest in our solar system. It's over 300 times more massive than the Earth and if we hollowed it out we could fill it up with about 1300 Earths in volume. Surprisingly it's actually one of the hardest targets for us to study up close here in our solar system. NASA's Juno spacecraft is going to be doing just exactly that. And what we're going to learn from it? Well first we need to understand how have we explored Jupiter so far? A naked eye object, Jupiter has been known since antiquity thanks to the fact that it's the third brightest object in the sky behind Venus and the Moon. Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian scientific polymath, pointed his self-built telescope to view Jupiter in 1610 and the astonishing discovery of four bright objects which we now call Jupiter's Galilean moons changed how we viewed our place in the universe. Astronomical observation continued until we finally had the technology to send robotic spacecraft on our behalf to study Jupiter directly. The two spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and 11, flew past Jupiter in 1973 and 1974 respectively, giving us our first detailed images of Jupiter's atmosphere showing something much more turbulent and complex than the best ground-based images could at that time. The next pair of spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, flying past in 1979, showed us the atmosphere in detail that will only be matched by Juno's JunoCam instrument. It also showed us that those four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were fascinating places that begged for further study. In addition, our understanding of Jupiter increased, finding it composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. Our next robotic explorer was named after the man who first looked himself, Galileo. Launched in 1989, its six-year journey took us into the atmosphere of Jupiter with a probe and it remained in orbit till 2003. During those many years of operations, it returned data showing us that Jupiter and the Galilean moons warranted a more thorough investigation. We studied Jupiter because after the sun, it's the second most massive object in our solar system. A majority of the material that formed the planets is with Jupiter, and that can tell us quite a lot about the state of our solar system and its infancy 4.6 billion years ago. Enter Juno, equipped with a suite of modern scientific instrumentation that can help us answer those inquiries about Jupiter and our origin, and most certainly give us even more questions to ask. Launched on August 5, 2011, Juno got off to a powerful start riding a United Launch Alliance Atlas V in the 551 configuration. Vicious. On a trajectory past Mars' orbit, it made several deep space maneuvers to align itself for a gravitational slingshot with the Earth on October 9, 2013, using the flyby as a test to see how its instruments were working. Finally, after nearly three years of cruising outward, Juno finally arrived at Jupiter, going into orbit the evening of July 4, 2016. To begin a mission expected to last until February 2018. The rather short duration is a direct result of Juno's orbit, carrying it through Jupiter's intense radiation belts as it skims a mere 5,000 kilometers above the cloud tops. That damaging radiation will eventually destroy some of Juno's sensitive instruments, but scientists are confident that they will gather plenty of the data they want before that occurs. And that data will tell us just what may lay beneath the atmosphere. We're certain that there's a cloud layer, followed by a layer of an incredible substance known as liquid metallic hydrogen, and below that, possibly, a rocky core the size of Earth. Juno's orbit brings it close enough that variances in the density of either of these layers can be detected through radio doppler experiments. We'll finally have a solid understanding of a few of the secrets the Jupiter has been keeping from us. Studying the powerful magnetic field generated by Jupiter and the monster aurora seen there will help us understand the dynamics of the Jupiter system better. Instruments on board, looking in infrared light, will also help us determine the amounts of gases such as methane and water vapor that are in Jupiter's atmosphere. These have varied over time due to a process currently unknown to us. We'll finally have a good understanding of a few of the secrets that Jupiter has been keeping from us. After all, the spacecraft is named Juno after the wife of Jupiter, who was able to see through a veil he laid out so Juno wouldn't catch him with any of his lovers. Boy, those ancient Greeks sure knew how to party hard. Thanks for watching The Space Pod. I'm Jared Head. So what do you think? Tell me in the comments below what is your favorite mission that has explored Jupiter so far and what is something that you are looking forward to from NASA's Juno mission. And of course, don't forget to like and subscribe to us across our multiple platforms where you can access tomorrow's live show and our space pods. 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