Jupit
Jupiter seen from below its south pole: a disc crowded with blue oval storms.
Jupiter, mission

Juno

NASA’s orbiter has been circling Jupiter from pole to pole since 2016.

Jupiter’s south pole from 52,000 km, combined from JunoCam images on three orbits so that every part is in daylight. Colour enhanced. The ovals are cyclones up to 1,000 km across. This light took about 0.17 seconds to reach the camera. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; image processing by Betsy Asher Hall and Gervasio Robles.

Launched
5 August 2011
Entered orbit around Jupiter
4 July 2016
One orbit now takes
33 days
Width with solar arrays
more than 20 m

Where Juno is at the site clock’s time

Wind my clock at the bottom of the page and this follows.

14 au acrossDrag the map sideways, or press the arrow keys on it, to move timeOrbits and distances are to scale. I draw the Sun, planets and spacecraft larger than life until you zoom in. One au is the distance from Earth to the Sun, about 150 million km.
Path data
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The spacecraft

The model loads when you scroll here.

Drag to turn it, or use the arrow keys. Model: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD). NASA’s model with its textures reduced to 1024 pixels and the file compressed; the shape is untouched. I lit it with one lamp standing in for the Sun and a plain studio surround so the metal shows; colours and materials are the model’s own and may not match the real spacecraft exactly.

What we know

What it is for

Juno’s main goal is to understand how Jupiter formed and changed. It was the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet from pole to pole and the first solar-powered spacecraft to work at Jupiter. On its close passes it has come within about 3,500 km of the cloud tops.

Flybys of the moons reshaped its orbit as it went. Ganymede’s gravity cut the orbit from 53 days to 43, Europa’s cut it to 38, and passes of Io in December 2023 and February 2024 brought it to 33.

How long it will last

This is the part I can’t tell you, because nobody has said. Juno’s last announced extension ran to September 2025. NASA still lists the mission as active, and the spacecraft was taking pictures at Jupiter on 1 May 2026, when it photographed the small moon Thebe. As of 11 November 2026 I have found no official statement of a new end date. I keep looking.

When the mission does end, NASA’s plan is for Juno’s orbit to decay until Jupiter’s gravity pulls it into the atmosphere.

Other missions