A few days from now, July 4th, the long journey of the NASA Juno probe will finally end with the final insertion in the orbit around the planet Jupiter. Five years after the start of this mission we will have an unprecedented choice to discover more about the biggest planet of our Solar system.
In more than a way, this is a milestone in the history of space exploration. Like the Cassini probe with Saturn, we will have the closest approach ever to Jupiter and this will enable the instrument payload of Juno to record first-hand information of great scientific importance.
A cam will give us high-quality images from a 4,000 kilometers distance and we will get a closer look to a number of atmospheric phenomenon of great interest. More, the data collected by the onboard instruments will help us to understand better the structure of this gas giant and, hopefully, to understand more of the first stages of our Solar system.
After a journey of 2.8 billion of kilometers, Juno will be active until February 2018; once ended its observation program the probe will fall in the external atmosphere of Jupiter, likewise its predecessor Galileo in 2003.
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Angelo Benuzzi 