NASA's Juno Mission To Jupiter: Aircraft Named After A Roman Goddess?

NASA definitely has a strong reason to celebrate as its much talked about mission--Juno spacecraft has finally entered orbit around Jupiter. Originally launched on August 5, 2011, the Juno spacecraft completed its five year voyage by traveling more than one and a half billion miles before getting into orbit around the Solar System's largest planet on Monday. Juno is only the second mission to Jupiter, the first being Galileo, launched in 1989.

"We're there. We're in orbit. We conquered Jupiter," said Juno chief scientist Scott Bolton while celebrating Juno's success.

#ICYMI, our @NASAJuno spacecraft entered orbit around mighty Jupiter last night!

Details: https://t.co/2uqevT37Uuhttps://t.co/IOD48LgrgI

— NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016

Carrying nine scientific instruments and sensors on board, Juno's mission is to "understand origin and evolution of Jupiter, look for solid planetary core, map magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in deep atmosphere, observe auroras," according to NASA.

Now, the question which arises is why the space agency named the aircraft as "Juno." According to Roman mythology, Juno was an ancient Roman goddess who was Jupiter's wife, Saturn's daughter and Mars' mother. Juno used to keep a watch over Rome, in particular women.

The mythological story states that Jupiter wasn't exactly a good husband as he had a number of mistresses. Jupiter used to hide secrets about his alleged affairs from his wife Juno and use clouds to cover his mistresses while his wife tried to unveil evidence of this adultery.

It is believed that most of the moons of Jupiter are the names of his mistresses, including Europa, Io and Metis. Galileo named them more than 400 years ago. Wondering if Juno spacecraft will do the same?

Well, now, that Juno is in orbit, the NASA aircraft will be snoop underneath the clouds to denude Jupiter's unknown secrets -but this time from a scientific perspective. So, now we know that NASA's latest mission spacecraft has its name inspired from a Roman goddess who suspected her husband of disloyalty.