late Monday night, as the American spacecraft Juno successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit, it was a moment of celebration for the space community as well as all space enthusiasts. In the words of Juno’s project manager at NASA Rick Nybakken, it was the “hardest thing NASA’s ever done” – and that’s saying something. The spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit after travelling for five years, across 1.7 billlion miles.
And before you ask, yes, Juno is the fastest manmade object ever built, travelling at a speed of 1,65,000 miles per hour. Its moment of entry, known as orbital insertion, was by far the riskiest in the probe mission which was launched back in August 2011. Often considered to be a solar system in its own right – Jupiter’s diametre is 11 times that of the Earth and its Great Red Spot three times the size of our planet and its magnetosphere stretches all the way to Saturn’s rings – knowledge about Jupiter is, nevertheless, scarce. And this is missing link that Juno will try to fix.
After Juno completes its 53-day orbit, it will begin transmitting tonnes of data about what it observes. Over the next two years, Juno is expected to orbit Jupiter 37 times. Scientists believe that the information it gathers will help them understand not only the planet and how it came to be, but also the universe at large. Juno’s success then is not just about the efforts of one team of scientists or one agency or even one nation. Juno’s success, like that of India’s Mangalyaan or the fly-by mission to Pluto or the first mission to moon, belongs to all of us, to all of humanity.
It is a reminder of the enormous potential of mankind, of all that is good and great and, indeed, divine within us. And perhaps, this is a reminder that we can well use in times such as these when we repeatedly see and suffer the worst of mankind – be it in Medina today or Baghdad yesterday or Dhaka the weekend earlier or before that in Kabul and Istanbul and Orlando and Brussels and Paris…