After five years and 1.7 billion miles the tennis court-sized probe needed to accomplish a risky braking manoeuvre in order for it to be hooked by Jupiter’s gravity.
In the early hours of this morning the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California received the confirmation signal which confirmed Juno had finally entered orbit.
For the next two years Juno begin the process of exploring Jupiter in unprecedented detail.
But what do we actually know about Jupiter? Well it turns out we already know quite a lot, and what we do know is as fascinating as it is daunting:
Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth
Open Image Modal
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The gas giant is 300 times more massive than our planet and five times farther from the sun. Jupiter years are twelve times longer than earth's, but the planet rotates so fast that its days are only 10 hours long.
Storms on Jupiter last hundreds of years
Open Image Modal
NASA
Powerful east-west winds in the planet's upper atmosphere give the planet its famous stripes. Storms can rage for years within these belts and zones.
It's believed to be the first planet to form
Like the sun, Jupiter consists mostly of hydrogen and helium. Scientists believe that it incorporated most of the leftover gas not incorporated into the sun.
If Jupiter had been bigger it would've become a star
Open Image Modal
Universal History Archive via Getty Images
If it had been just 80 times larger Jupiter would have become a star with its very own solar system. Instead it remains a giant among our planets, indeed minus the sun, Jupiter contains more than twice the amount of material within everything else in our solar system - all the planets, moons, asteroids and comets.
The Great Red Spot is twice as wide as Earth
Open Image Modal
Universal History Archive via Getty Images
The huge storm has been observed for more than two hundred years. Even though it is shrinking it's still large enough to house two Earths.
Jupiter's magnetic field is nearly 20,000 times as powerful as Earth's
Open Image Modal
NASA/JPL/Caltech
The magnetosphere traps swarms of charged particles, some of which become stuck in an intense radiation belt near the planet. This radiation belt extends more than 1 billion kilometres and proves hazardous to spacecraft.
The planet's centre is several times hotter than the sun's surface
The pressure in Jupiter's core is tens of millions of times the air pressure on Earth. Its centre is also much hotter than the surface of the sun.
It has beautiful auroras
Open Image Modal
NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester)
Jupiter's magnetic field channels electrons and ions towards the poles, creating stunning auroras, which are dominated by the planet's own rotation, rather than by its magnetic field and solar wind as is the case on Earth.
Its rings are composed largely of dust
Jupiter's rings are made up of dust, believed by scientists to have been formed as micrometeoroids smash into its four inner moons.
It has more than 60 moons
Open Image Modal
Universal History Archive via Getty Images
The largest planet in our solar system is orbited by four large moons and more than 60 smaller ones, resembling a solar system in miniature.
Jupiter probe
(01 of04)
Open Image Modal
(From L) Diane Brown, NASA Juno program executive, Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Juno Project manager Rick Nybakken and Guy Beutelschies, Lockheed Martin director of space exploration, celebrate at a press conference after the Juno spacecraft was successfully placed into Jupiter's orbit, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on July 4, 2016.Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 5, 2011 on a five-year voyage to its mission to study the planet's formation, evolution and structure. / AFP / Robyn BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images) (credit:ROBYN BECK via Getty Images)
(02 of04)
Open Image Modal
PASADENA, CA - JULY 4: In this NASA handout, From left to right: Dr. Jim Green, Planetary Science Division Director, NASA; Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute; Geoff Yoder, acting Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, NASA; Michael Watkins, director, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); and Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); celebrate with others on the Juno team after they received confirmation from the spacecraft that it had successfully completed the engine burn and entered orbit of Jupiter on July 4, 2016 in Pasadena, CA. The Juno mission launched August 5, 2011 and will orbit the planet for 20 months to collect data on the planetary core, map the magnetic field, and measure the amount of water and ammonia in the atmosphere. (Photo by Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via Getty Images)MANDATORY CREDIT: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)Disposition: AFS 8/101 - Permanent (credit:Handout via Getty Images)
(03 of04)
Open Image Modal
(From R) Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager, Scott Bolton, NASA principal investigator for the Juno mission to Jupiter and Jim Green, NASA director of Planetary Science, react as the Juno spacecraft successfully enters Jupiter's orbit on July 4, 2016, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 5, 2011 on a five-year voyage to its mission to study the planet's formation, evolution and structure. / AFP / POOL / Ringo Chiu (Photo credit should read RINGO CHIU/AFP/Getty Images) (credit:RINGO CHIU via Getty Images)
(04 of04)
Open Image Modal
Staff members watch on before the solar-powered Juno spacecraft went into orbit around Jupiter, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on July 4, 2016. Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 5, 2011 on a five-year voyage to its mission to study the planet's formation, evolution and structure. / AFP / POOL / Ringo Chiu (Photo credit should read RINGO CHIU/AFP/Getty Images) (credit:RINGO CHIU via Getty Images)