Yesterday (Thursday), the NASA space agency’s Juno spacecraft snatched the record for being the most distant solar-powered explorer from the Sun, its power source – being at a record distance of 793 million kilometres.
Launched on August 5, 2011 and scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on July 4, Juno’s main mission is to understand the origin and evolution of this, the largest planet in our solar system.
The spacecraft’s maximum distance from the Sun during its 16-month science mission will be about 832m kms, an almost 5% increase in the record for solar-powered space vehicles, said the space agency’s press release.
Jupiter’s orbit is five times farther from the Sun than Earth’s, and it therefore receives 25 times less sunlight than the Earth.
The new milestone breaks the record held by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft which set a distance of 792m kms from the Sun in October 2012, during its approach to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
