Juno successfully enters Jupiter orbit: NASA

MIAMI: NASA's unmanned Juno spacecraft on Monday began orbiting Jupiter, a key triumph for a $1.1 billion mission that aims to uncover the origins of the biggest planet in the solar system.

"Welcome to Jupiter," said a commentator at mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The room erupted in cheers as the solar observatory, which has traveled 1.7 billion miles (2.7 billion kilometers) since it launched five years ago from Cape Canaveral, Florida, successfully entered its aimed-for orbit around Jupiter at 11:53pm (03:53 GMT on Tuesday).



The mission cost $1.1 billion dollars and launched five years ago from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The NASA mission aims to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole, sampling its charged particles and magnetic fields for the first time and revealing more about the auroras in ultraviolet light that can be seen around the planet's polar regions.

Juno should circle the planet 37 times before finally making a death plunge in 2018, to prevent the spacecraft from causing damage to any of Jupiter's icy moons, which NASA hopes to explore one day for signs of life.

Although Juno will not be the first spacecraft to circle Jupiter, NASA says its orbit will bring it closer than its predecessor, Galileo, which launched in 1989.

That spacecraft found evidence of subsurface saltwater on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto before making a final plunge into Jupiter in 2003.

NASA says Juno should be able to get closer than Galileo -- this time within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops.

"We have done everything humanly possible to make this mission a success," said NASA's director of planetary science, Jim Green.

However, "it is still a cliffhanger for me, too."