The craft went into safe mode during an Earth flyby

Oct 11, 2013 14:28 GMT  ·  By

Juno, the NASA spacecraft that flew by close to the Earth a couple of days ago on its way to Jupiter, is still in safe mode while scientists investigate what went wrong during the flyby. There's no hurry, ss the craft still has three more years of space travel until it reaches Jupiter and it doesn't really need all its instruments until then.

That said, NASA scientists are getting some data from the craft. For example, they've gotten images of the Earth captured by June as it was approaching our planet, as Universe Today reports.

This shows that Juno is functioning properly and that it can transmit data back to Earth. However, the cause of the error that put it into an automatic safe mode is still unknown. NASA doesn't believe it's anything serious and has a couple of theories, but there's nothing concrete for now.