The countdown is on for the Juno spacecraft to reach its destination at Jupiter in a matter of hours after a five-year journey, the first solar-powered spacecraft to travel this far from the sun. This evening, July 4, Juno will fire its main engine for 35 minutes, placing it into an eccentric polar orbit around the gas giant. At its closest approach, Juno's orbit will pass a mere 2,900 miles (4,667 kilometers) from Jupiter's cloud tops, closer than any previous spacecraft, and it will be moving at roughly 129,000 mph (65 kps), faster than any previous man-made object.

At that altitude, the probe will be subjected to the harshest radiation environment in the solar system. Jupiter's powerful magnetic field surrounds the planet with a doughnut-shaped field of high-energy electrons, protons, and ions traveling at nearly the speed of light.

Juno will orbit the gas giant 37 times over the next 20 months, with the goal that it will collect data and images that offer clues to the origins of our solar system and the formation of the planets and moons. It will be only the second time that a probe has gone into orbit around the giant planet.

The critical moment will be the end of the engine burn, at 11:53 p.m. Eastern time. NASA Television will begin coverage at 10:30 p.m.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA

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China will launch a mission to land on the dark side of the moon in two years' time, state media reported, in what will be a first for humanity. The moon's far hemisphere is never directly visible from Earth and while it has been photographed, with the first images appearing in 1959, it has never been explored. Earlier reports from the Xinhua news agency hinted that China may be considering the construction of a pioneering radio telescope on the moons virgin far side, which will give it an unobstructed window on the Cosmos that was confirmed this June, 2016 when an agreement was announced between the Netherlands and China, that a Dutch-built radio antenna will travel to the Moon aboard the Chinese Chang'e 4 satellite and usher in a new era of radio astronomy allowing for the study of objects that might otherwise be invisible or hidden in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The  Chang'e-4 probe -- named for the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology -- will be launched to it in 2018, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "The Chang'e-4's lander and rover will make a soft landing on the back side of the moon, and will carry out in-place and patrolling surveys," according to the country's lunar exploration chief Liu Jizhong.

Beijing sees its military-run, multi-billion-dollar space program as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise, as well as evidence of the ruling Communist Party's success in transforming the once poverty-stricken nation.

But for the most part it has so far replicated activities that the US and Soviet Union pioneered decades ago. "The implementation of the Chang'e-4 mission has helped our country make the leap from following to leading in the field of lunar exploration," Liu added.

In 2013, China landed a rover dubbed Yutu on the moon and the following year an unmanned probe completed its first return mission to the earth's only natural satellite. Beijing has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon.

Space flight is "an important manifestation of overall national strength", Xinhua cited science official Qian Yan as saying, adding that every success had "greatly stimulated the public's... pride in the achievements of the motherland's development."

Clive Neal, chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group affiliated with NASA, confirmed that the Chang'e-4 mission was unprecedented. "There has been no surface exploration of the far side," he told AFP Friday. It is "very different to the near side because of the biggest hole in the solar system -- the South Pole-Aitken basin, shown above, which may have exposed mantle materials -- and the thicker lunar crust". The basin is the largest known impact crater in the solar system, nearly 2,500 kilometers wide and 13 kilometers deep.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA and Beijing (AFP) and Xinhua News Agency

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