A close encounter of the Jupiter kind

A SPACECRAFT has skimmed the clouds of Jupiter in a recordbreaking close approach to the giant planet.

Juno activated its suite of nine instruments as it soared 2,600 miles above Jupiter’s swirling clouds tops, travelling at 130,000mph, on Saturday. Scientists confirmed the craft had successfully completed its closest ever fly-by to the planet, the first of 36, which are due to end in February 2018.

Mission controllers at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, expect to capture images and scientific data from the approach, but it will take several days to download the information. It took Juno five years to complete its 1.8bn-mile journey from Earth. The previous record for a close approach to the planet was set by Nasa’s Pioneer 11 spacecraft, which passed at a distance of 27,000 miles in 1974.