NASA Juno Launch Tweetup Day One "A Discovery In The VAB." (8.4.11)

ADD US ON GOOGLE PLUS! http://gplus.to/TheTimTracker CHECK OUT OUR SKIT CHANNEL! http://www.youtube.com/skittyskittybangbang FaceBook - http://www.facebook.com/TheTimTracker Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/thetimtracker http://www.twitter.com/thejenntracker Daily Booth - http://www.dailybooth.com/thetimtracker http://www.dailybooth.com/thejenntracker Day one of the NASA Tweetup to see the launch of Juno from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida. The most exciting part of the little tour we went on was seeing the Space Shuttle Discovery tucked away in a corner of the vehicle assembly building! All torn down and ready to be transported to its final home in Washington DC! Here is a little information about the launch Key things to know about Juno Spacecraft launched August 5, 2011 Five-year cruise to Jupiter, arriving July 2016 Spacecraft will orbit Jupiter for about one year (33 orbits) Mission ends with de-orbit into Jupiter Juno will improve our understanding of our solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Specifically, Juno will... Determine how much water is in Jupiter's atmosphere, which helps determine which planet formation theory is correct (or if new theories are needed) Look deep into Jupiter's atmosphere to measure composition, temperature, cloud motions and other properties Map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields, revealing the planet's deep structure Explore and study Jupiter's magnetosphere near the planet's poles, especially the auroras -- Jupiter's northern and southern lights -- providing new insights about how the planet's enormous magnetic force field affects its atmosphere. NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT) Friday to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter. Juno's detailed study of the largest planet in our solar system will help reveal Jupiter's origin and evolution. As the archetype of giant gas planets, Jupiter can help scientists understand the origin of our solar system and learn more about planetary systems around other stars. "Today, with the launch of the Juno spacecraft, NASA began a journey to yet another new frontier," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The future of exploration includes cutting-edge science like this to help us better understand our solar system and an ever-increasing array of challenging destinations." After Juno's launch aboard an Atlas V rocket, mission controllers now await telemetry from the spacecraft indicating it has achieved its proper orientation, and that its massive solar arrays, the biggest on any NASA deep-space probe, have deployed and are generating power. "We are on our way, and early indications show we are on our planned trajectory," said Jan Chodas, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We will know more about Juno's status in a couple hours after its radios are energized and the signal is acquired by the Deep Space Network antennas at Canberra." Juno will cover the distance from Earth to the moon (about 250,000 miles or 402,336 kilometers) in less than one day's time. It will take another five years and 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to complete the journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will orbit the planet's poles 33 times and use its collection of eight science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, and look for a potential solid planetary core. With four large moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms its own miniature solar system. Its composition resembles that of a star, and if it had been about 80 times more massive, the planet could have become a star instead. Juno's name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. The NASA Deep Space Network -- or DSN -- is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.