NASA's Jupiter Probe to Slingshot Past Earth Wednesday

NASA's Juno spacecraft will fly within 350 miles of Earth's surface Wednesday, Oct. 9 as it executes a slingshot maneuver that will use the magic of gravity to hurl the probe toward Jupiter at high speed.

The move has been plotted for years. Following the August 2011 launch of Juno, the spacecraft made its way toward Mars before swinging back toward Earth. The probe is approaching Earth, where it will get a powerful boot in speed as gravity pulls the probe towards Earth before a slingshot effect snaps it back on an outward-bound course with enough speed to arrive at Jupiter by July 2016.

"Juno will be really smoking as it passes Earth at a speed of about 25 miles per second relative to the Sun. But it will need every bit of this speed to get to Jupiter for its July 4, 2016 capture into polar orbit about Jupiter," said Bill Kurth a mission specialist and lead investigator of Juno's "Wave" instrument. "The first half of its journey has been simply to set up this gravity assist with Earth."

But the flyby of Earth is not an opportunity wasted. Juno will record video of the Earth-Moon system that will be the first to show to show Earth spinning on its axis from a distance, said Scott Bolton, a principal investigator for the Juno mission.

Once Juno enters an orbit with Jupiter, it will revolve around the gas giant about 33 times a year. It will also be the first probe to orbit Jupiter over both of its poles. In particular, the Juno mission will study Jupiter's auroras -- its northern and southern lights -- by flying directly through the electrical current systems that generate them.

"Jupiter has the largest and most energetic magnetosphere, and to finally get an opportunity to study the nature of its auroras and the role radio and plasma waves play in their generation makes Juno a really exciting mission for me," said Kurth.

After studying Jupiter for one year, the Juno probe will be instructed to crash land into the planet, where it will burn up. The probe will do this to prevent a possible crash landing on the icy world of Europa, where contact could possibly contaminate the moon with microbes from Earth.

Juno will see the last it ever will of Earth on Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 3:21p.m. EDT.