NASA will host a media briefing at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, June 16, to discuss the agency's Juno spacecraft and its July 4th arrival at Jupiter.
The briefing will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
The solar-powered spacecraft will perform a suspenseful Jupiter orbit insertion maneuver -- a 35-minute burn of its main engine -- which will slow Juno by about 1,200 mph (542 meters per second) so it can be captured into the gas giant's polar orbit. Juno will loop Jupiter 37 times during 20 months, skimming to within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above its swirling cloud tops.
Juno will provide answers to ongoing mysteries about Jupiter's core, composition and magnetic fields, and provide new clues about the origins of our solar system.
The briefing participants will be:
• Diane Brown, Juno mission program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
• Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
• Heidi Becker, radiation monitoring investigation lead, JPL
• Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator, Instituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome
Members of the public can ask questions on social media using #AskNASA.
For NASA TV downlink information and schedules, and to view the news briefing, visit:
The briefing will also be streamed live on:
http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2
More information about the Juno mission is available at: