NASA spacecraft begins 5-year trip to Jupiter

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — A sun-powered robotic explorer named Juno is rocketing toward Jupiter on a fresh quest to discover the secret recipe for making planets. Juno is solar powered, a first for a spacecraft meant to roam so far from the sun. The three huge solar panels popped open an hour into the flight, each one stretching as long and wide as a tractor-trailer. Previous spacecraft to the outer planets have relied on nuclear energy. Jupiter is so big it could contain everything in the solar system, minus the sun, and still be twice as massive. Astronomers say it probably was the first planet in the solar system to form.

Juno will venture much closer to Jupiter than any of the eight spacecraft that have visited since the 1970s, most of them just passing by. It's by far the most focused and elaborate Jupiter mission. "We look deeper. We go much closer. We're going over the poles. So we're doing a lot of new things that have never been done, and we're going to get all this brand-new information," Bolton said. The $1.1 billion mission — which will end with Juno taking a fatal plunge into Jupiter in 2017 — kicks off a flurry of astronomy missions by NASA.

If all goes well, Juno will go into orbit around Jupiter's poles — a first — on July 4, 2016.