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Date with Destiny

After five years, NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at its destination.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft, launched in 2011, is finally about to come face-to-face with the enormous planet Jupiter. And it will do so after making a last push through an onslaught of rocks, dust, and electrons flung at it from the planet’s massive gravity well. “It’s a monster, it’s unforgiving, it’s relentless,” says Principal Investigator Scott Bolton in the video above.

“It’s the biggest planet in the solar system,” says Steve Levin of NASA/JPL. “And it’s got the biggest and baddest radiation, and the biggest and baddest magnetic field.” But Jupiter holds secrets we need to know.

And so, on July 4, the Juno craft will attempt a Jupiter Orbital Insertion (JOI)—going deeper into the behemoth’s punishing radiation than ever before—to collect what data it can, and then try to get out before it’s too late. Intense. “Nothing’s really certain about what’s going to happen,” says NASA/JPL’s Heidi Becker.