Juno’s rendezvous with Jupiter

Guests: Randy Gladstone, Derrick Pitts, Eric Jensen

Yesterday the spacecraft Juno made it into Jupiter’s orbit, a tricky maneuver given that the probe was traveling over 160,000 miles per hour.  Launched in 2011, Juno had journeyed over 1.8 billion miles across space to reach the gas giant.  As the probe orbits Jupiter for the next two years, it will be send home all kinds of data that will shed light on the largest and oldest planet in our solar system. Today guest host Mary Cummings-Jordan talks about the Juno mission and what scientists are hoping to learn about the origins of Jupiter and the formation of our own Milky Way. Our guests are RANDY GLADSTONE, an instrumental lead on the Juno mission and a program director at the Southwest Research Institute, DERRICK PITTS, Chief Astronomer and Director of the Fels Planetarium at The Franklin Institute, and ERIC JENSEN, professor of astronomy at Swarthmore College.