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NASA Juno Survives First Travel Through Jupiter’s Extreme Orbit Radiation; Shows First Image As Proof [VIDEO]

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NASA has confirmed the arrival of Juno spacecraft to planet Jupiter last July 4 through the first photo of the largest planet in the solar system captured by JunoCam on July 10. To get this shot, NASA scientists powered off the camera and its instruments as precautionary measure to avoid conflict when Juno encounter extreme radiation as it maneuver to go through Jupiter's orbit on July 5.

Scott Bolton, the Principal Investigator and fellow at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said that they had to turn all their instruments off to ensure Juno's successful Jupiter orbit insertion on July 4, Tech Times wrote.

NASA released the photo Tuesday. Visible in the photo that the spacecraft captured was the image of Jupiter together with three of its largest moons: Europa, Io and Ganymede. The image also displays the planet's famous Great Red Spot. The probe team used its JunoCam device to take Jupiter's photos. During the photo shoot, Juno was roughly 2.7 million miles away from Jupiter.

JunoCam serves as Juno's eyes throughout its mission probe. It is a color and visible-light camera designed to take extraordinary images of the cloud tops and poles of Jupiter. It was also built-in on the spacecraft to cater for public engagements. Although the images it captured may help the scientists in their probe, NASA clarified that JunoCam is not deliberated to be one of the science instruments for the Juno mission, Tech Times added.

Scientists added that high resolution images of Jupiter will arrive in the coming weeks. Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator from the Planetary Science Institute, said that JunoCam will capture its first high resolution images of the giant planet when the spacecraft had its next close pass to Jupiter on on Aug. 27.

Juno spacecraft is the seventh robotic probe to orbit planet Jupiter in the past 45 years. Its visible-light camera has been powered back on sixth day after the probe inserted itself into the gas giant's orbit. Meanwhile, know more about Jupiter in the video below.

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