This week at NASA: Juno arrives at Jupiter and more

After an almost five-year journey to Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft successfully settled into orbit around our solar system’s largest planet on July 4 – giving Juno team members yet another reason to celebrate on America’s birthday.
In a scenario reminiscent of the Curiosity rover’s triumphant arrival on Mars, Juno became the latest NASA spacecraft to pull off a tricky series of maneuvers to safely arrive at a distant planet. Over the next few months, Juno’s mission and science teams will perform final testing on the spacecraft’s subsystems and science instruments and even collect some preliminary science data. The principal goal of the mission is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter – which will advance our understanding about the role giant planets like Jupiter might play in the formation of a solar system – including our own. Also, New Crew Launches to the ISS, NASA Week at Essence Festival, and Survey of Earth’s Atmosphere.