More than four and a half years after arriving in orbit of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno mission continues to excel at its primary goal of answering outstanding questions about the Jovian system, something highlighted in a recent science release detailing a much drier region of the planet’s upper atmosphere than previously predicted.
Meanwhile, with the spacecraft in good condition, NASA has officially granted a second — and final — mission extension to the probe until September 2025. However, the agency does not expect Juno to survive to this new end-of-mission target due to the extreme radiation environment it operates within.