The probe is heading towards the biggest planet in our solar system

Oct 10, 2013 22:56 GMT  ·  By

NASA's Juno spacecraft is now well on its way to Jupiter. It flew by the Earth yesterday to pick up the speed it needs to reach the distant planet. There were some problems, the craft went into safe mode due to a still unknown error. The probe should be ok, safe mode was created precisely to shield the craft from problems.

In all likelihood, the issue will be found and fixed and June will complete its Jupiter mission without any other glitches. But it's still got a few more years to go before it gets there, in August 2016.

In the meantime though, Bill Nye has put together a few YouTube videos explaining what Juno is supposed to do, why it needs the huge solar panel it has, and why it had to fly by the Earth in the first place.