NASA Spacecraft Closing in on Jupiter, Media Briefing to Discuss July 4 Arrival

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Jun 13, 2016, 03:51 ET

WASHINGTON, June 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will host a media briefing at 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 in the James Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, 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, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California
Heidi Becker, radiation monitoring investigation lead, JPL
Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator, Instituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome

Media may ask questions during the event on site and by phone. Members of the public also can ask questions on social media using #AskNASA.

To participate in the briefing by phone, media must email their name, media affiliation and phone number to Laurie Cantillo at [email protected] by 1 p.m. Thursday.

For NASA TV downlink information and schedules, and to view the news briefing, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

More information about the Juno mission is available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/juno

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SOURCE NASA