During the ongoing mission, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will maintain its 53-day polar orbit around Jupiter. In the future, the device will approach at 5000 km to the cloudy peaks.
NASA approved the update of the scientific work of the Juno spacecraft until July 2021. This provides an additional 41 months in orbit around Jupiter and will allow the device to achieve its main scientific goals. Juno is in a 53-day orbit, not 14-day, as originally planned. The reason was the problem in the valves on the fuel system of the spacecraft. A longer orbit means more time is needed to gather scientific information. In April, an independent expert group confirmed that Juno is on the path to achieving scientific goals and returns amazing results. All mechanisms and devices function normally. NASA will fund the mission until 2022. Final operations are expected in July 2021.
The extension of the mission will not only answer long-standing questions about Jupiter, but also explore new scientific puzzles. Each additional orbit provides new surprises about a distant world. As a bonus, scientists will have the opportunity to explore the far reaches of Jupiter’s magnetosphere — an area of space dominated by a planetary magnetic field.
