Five years later, a groundbreaking spacecraft arrived in orbit around Jupiter.
4 billion mile voyage
The space probe named after Roman goddess Juno completed a high
See it launch a rocket to slow its 150-mile-per-hour wooden pile maneuver close to Earth.
If the probe succeeds, Juno's instruments and cameras can provide insight into the history of the Earth and the solar system.
Cheers and applause broke out in the Mission Control of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology, when a signal arrived confirming that the burn was completed at about 4. 54am.
Scott Bolton, the mission's chief scientist, congratulated his team on the celebration, "You 've just done the hardest thing Nasa has ever had ".
The spacecraft began a dangerous final phase of the journey with 35-early Tuesday morning-
Its rocket engine exploded for a few minutes.
Scientists plan to take Juno within 2,900 miles of Jupiter's rotating cloud top, an area of space blown up by the highest levels of radiation in the solar system. The titanium-
The mission of the armored detector is to improve our understanding of Jupiter's formation and evolution by using sophisticated instruments to observe the thick atmosphere and the famous big red dot.
The spacecraft will study the composition of gas planets, gravity, magnetic fields and the source of their 38-4 miles of violent wind per hour, while the panoramic camera will also return in detail images of planets that have never been seen before.
But the mission still faces the huge challenge of running the 0. 89 billion probe in the worst environment of the solar system.
Jupiter is surrounded by a region of high radiation, with particles inspired by its super-strong magnetic field, and a dust and rock ring similar to its neighbor, Saturn, posing a further threat to the investigation.
The previous record of approaching Jupiter was created by Nasa's Pioneer Ship 11, which passed through Jupiter in 1974 at a distance of 27,000 miles.
From 1995 to 2003, the Galileo spacecraft visited Jupiter and its satellites, but only one spacecraft flew around the Earth.
On August 5, 2011, Juno was launched into space by an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The mission is part of NASA's new field program for robotic space missions. last year, the New Horizons spacecraft flew close.
You can see the dwarf planet Pluto.