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  NASA's Juno enters Jupiter orbitJul 05, 2016 9:08 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Juno probe enters into orbit around Jupiter says the BBC; there had been some concern that passing through Jupiter's intense radiation belts could have shorted something out and caused the probe to miss its orbital entry—supposedly Juno got a radiation equivalent to about "a million dental X-rays" going into orbit—but apparently its titanium shielding held, and all seems to be going according to plan, with Juno moving into a large, elliptical 53-day orbit around the gas giant; the next big step will take place in mid-October, when it will thrust into a tighter 14-day orbit that skims "just a few thousand kilometres above the cloudtops"; at that point, Juno will begin its main science mission of trying to glean hints of Jupiter's interior composition: does it in fact have a core of dense, electrically conducting, fluid "metallic" hydrogen, for instance, that could account for the planet's powerful magnetic field? Answers to that and other questions will help scientists figure out how and where (did it form farther out or closer in, and then move to its current position orbit around the Sun?) Jupiter formed in our solar system's beginnings, and hopefully help explain things like Jupiter's two-Earths-wide storm known as the "Great Red Spot" that has been raging, apparently, for centuries.
 
 
 
 
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