Juno Jupiter mission readied for launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 4 (UPI) -- NASA says its Juno probe is on track for a Friday launch to Jupiter to study the planet's swirling clouds and gather evidence of how the solar system formed.

"The special thing about Juno is we're really looking at one of the first steps, the earliest time in our solar system's history," said Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the Juno mission. "Right after the sun formed, what happened that allowed the planets to form and why are the planets a slightly different composition than the sun?"

Juno is scheduled to lift off atop an Atlas V rocket at 11:34 a.m. EDT Friday from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

There is a limited launch window for Juno to launch before Jupiter's orbit takes the planet out of the necessary alignment.

"Juno only has a 22-day launch window, or else we're down for another 13 months until our next opportunity," said John Calvert, mission manager for Juno."

When it arrives at Jupiter in August 2016, the spacecraft will spend about a year surveying the planet and its moons to draw a detailed picture of its magnetic field and determine whether there is a solid core beneath its multicolored clouds, NASA said.