New NASA Missions Will Tour The Solar System Originally
published on Fri August 5, 2011 3:00 am NASA's space shuttle may
be down for the count, but robotic planetary missions are up, up
and away. Before the end of this year, three new solar system
probes are due to launch. Juno To Jupiter Why Jupiter? Well it's
big. "It's the largest of all the planets. In fact, it's got
more material in it than all the rest of the solar system
combined," says Scott Bolton, a planetary scientist at the
Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator for the
Juno mission. Jupiter was also probably the first planet to form
in our solar system. "And that's why it's very interesting to us
if we want to go back in time and understand where we came from
and understand how planets were made — Jupiter holds this
secret," says Bolton. "What we're really after is discovering
the recipe for making planets, and we're back at the first step
of making sure we have all the ingredients in that recipe."
It'll take five years for Juno