NASA's Juno spacecraft left Earth back in 2011 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 headed towards Jupiter. It was not on a direct flight to the solar system's largest known planet however.
Juno passed Earth earlier today, Oct. 9, coming as close as 347 miles from our planet, according to the International Business Times. The flyby was done as part of a gravity assist for the spacecraft, to help accelerate Juno by 16,330 mph.
"The purpose of the flyby is to change speed so that our orbit will reach all the way out to Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, in a press statement. "We had enough energy to reach out to the asteroid belt when we left Earth and went into orbit around the sun."
NASA launched Juno to a specific location in the solar system just past Mars, then two main engine burns executed in 2012 sent it back around to head towards Earth, according to Bolton.
Juno launched from Cape Canaveral, F.L. on Aug. 5, 2011.
"A direct mission to Jupiter would have required about 50 percent more fuel than we loaded," said Tim Gasparrini, Juno program manager at Lockheed Martin Corp., the spacecraft's prime contractor, in a press statement. "Had we not chosen to do the flyby, the mission would have required a bigger launch vehicle, a larger spacecraft and would have been more expensive."
The spacecraft will travel around Jupiter exactly 32 times in one year and is set for a polar orbit and will be the first space craft to orbit over Jupiter's poles, according to International Business Times.
Juno will study the planet's gravity, magnetic fields, and magnetosphere.
The closest Juno will get to the planet is 3,100 miles above the cloud tops of the large planet.
Juno is equipped with a number of important instruments, like two spectrometers, which is an instrument that measures radio and plasma waves, as well as the JunoCam, which is a color camera that will be used to take photos of Jupiter's poles.
Juno is on track to reach the solar system's largest planet by July 4, 2016.
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