Juno to explore origins of the solar system; liftoff scheduled for 11:34am ET
(NEWSER) - Today NASA will launch a spacecraft that they're hoping will pry the secrets of the solar system from Jupiter. Dubbed "Juno" (Jupiter’s wife in Roman mythology, get it?), the probe will take five years to travel to Jupiter, arriving on July 4, 2016, the New York Times reports. It’ll then spend a year orbiting the planet 33 times, gathering information about Jupiter's gravity, magnetic fields, and the amount of water in the atmosphere—observations that should shed light on the solar system’s early days. More»
