New Delhi:
To reach the biggest and the baddest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft has travelled almost 1.8 billion miles across solar system in the past five years. The spacecraft has taken a step further by initiating the second phase of its mission that will be taking 37 orbits and 20 months to complete.
Juno entered its orbit around the gas giant on July 4 after its main engine was fired to slow down and be captured into orbit around Jupiter.
"NASA/JPL is excited to share the unprocessed images that comprise the approach movie acquired by JunoCam as the Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter. Collection of the images began 3 weeks before Juno fired its engines to slow down and be captured into orbit around Jupiter," a NASA official said in a press release where the downloadable links were also announced.
According to NASA, 1300 images were taken by the Junocam. It was the same images that were stitched together like a 'flip-book' to create Juno's journey movie that was released earlier this month. Jupiter's moon Callisto made a complete orbit around Jupiter while the other three moons made multiple orbits from June 12 to June 29.
Juno's journey and its movements was captured by Junocam. NASA will be releasing the images to permit and encourage public to process the images on their own to create their unique product and for study purposes. People running out of time can watch the video compilation that will be the most concise version of all the 1,300 images released by NASA.
The Galilean moon made more interesting video apart from Jupiter. Apart from Jupiter, the Galilean moons made more interesting. The images were capture by Juno from its 10-million mile distance from the destination planet and came to an end when Juno reached the 3-million mile mark.
