By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent, Pasadena
Breaking News - The US space agency has successfully put a new probe in orbit around Jupiter.
The
Juno satellite, which left Earth five years ago, had to fire a rocket
engine to slow its approach to the planet and get caught by its gravity.
A sequence of tones transmitted from the spacecraft confirmed the braking manoeuvre had gone as planned.
Receipt of the radio messages prompted wild cheering at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"All
stations on Juno co-ord, we have the tone for burn cut-off on Delta B,"
Juno Mission Control had announced. "Roger Juno, welcome to Jupiter."
Scientists
plan to use the spacecraft to sense the planet's deep interior. They
think the structure and the chemistry of its insides hold clues to how
this giant world formed some four-and-a-half-billion years ago.
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