





It sounds incredible, but the NASA spacecraft Juno, launched five years ago, reached its destination — the planet Jupiter — in the early hours of July 4, 2016, within one second of its scheduled arrival time. What is mind-blowing is that this unmanned probe departed from planet earth five years ago, travelled 1.7 billion miles through the solar system, negotiated its way through meticulous handling of rebooting stages, and got where it was going on the click of a button.





No wonder NASA is celebrating. No wonder the whole scientific world is applauding.





My friends all boast that they can travel the Mammee Bay to Mandela highway leg in 45 minutes. I have been trying to do it in less than an hour and still remain the laughing stock of my family. Obviously I will never make it to Jupiter. Not in the realm of what has been a phenomenal achievement that penetrated deep space with such unerring accuracy.





"Welcome to Jupiter" was the tweet around our planet. Stunning pictures of Jupiter are now being released on the Internet. The one that got me most was that image of Jupiter ‘dancing’ with her four closest moons (there are actually 67 moons orbiting Jupiter). The shots were taken by the on-board camera some three million miles away from its destination on June 29. These are the first-ever photos of a planet interacting with its moons, a sight which has never been seen before. It leaves you in awe sitting in your living room and watching this interplay in space so many million miles away.





Another fantastic unearthing were the "eerie sounds of Jupiter" which were captured as the probe headed towards the planet. A strange whistling sound was heard emanating from the orb as the spacecraft approached. I would run. The spacecraft did not. The sound is said to be caused by solar winds hitting Jupiter at near 600 miles per hour.





Now, Jupiter is not your everyday planet. It is the solar system’s largest. Indeed it is a spectacular place, described as a solar system in miniature, with at least 67 moons, ranging from the bright yellow IO, to Europa (a candidate for possible signs of alien life), to beautiful Callisto which looks like a giant, sparkling marble. The planet itself is ringed by bands of colourful yellow, orange, and red clouds.

It is said that you cannot understand the solar system without understanding Jupiter. Hence, the

Juno probe, whose job is to investigate the history of the system’s largest planet.







Juno is the second spacecraft to visit since

Galileo went into orbit between 1995 and 2003.

Galileo was deliberately crashed into Jupiter on September 21, 2003 to protect one of its discoveries which had indicated the possibility of a large ocean beneath the moon Europa’s surface.







Juno left Earth on August 5, 2011, and has travelled around 445 million miles. The mission will conclude in February 2018 when, as with its predecessor

Galileo, it will be allowed to burn up in Jupiter’s outer atmosphere in order to avoid any biological contamination of any one of its moons, in particular the life suspect Europa.





They say NASA must have a sense of humour, as the craft is named after the mythical wife of the Greek god Jupiter. Miss Juno was always suspicious of Jupiter’s love affairs, indeed it is written in Greek mythology that Jupiter "drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, but his goddess was able to peer through the clouds and see Jupiter’s real nature". Now, armed with those high-tech cameras on-board, and after all these thousands of years, the lady will be showing up again to peer through the clouds, and this time it will be curtains for that old reprobate Mr Jupiter.













The Space Race





Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries, such as the celebrated Space Race between Russia and America. The race was a competition which lasted from 1955 to 1975, well within the memory of many Jamaicans who grew up under the watchful eye of the thousands of satellites that have been launched and have been circling the globe with manned journeys to the moon and unmanned probes into the outer reaches of the galaxy.





We didn’t have television then, but back in those days radio and the written media allowed us a ringside seat as we watched the race play out across the world stage. The contest can be said to have officially begun on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union announced that it planned to launch satellites into space; this in response to a similar announcement made a few days earlier by its arch-rival the USA.





The genesis for all this argument was the Cold War, which had developed between the East and the West since the end of World War II and into the 1950s. It was a time when both countries, with the help of captured German engineers, were busily developing modern rocket arsenals up to the levels of the intercontinental ballistic missiles with space launch capacities.





The development took on a cloak-and-dagger element when the Russians, following their declaration of intent, began to conceal their efforts under a cloud of secrecy that kept out America and the rest of the world.





Imagine then, the world’s surprise — and us at ringside — when suddenly, on Friday October 4, 1957, radio receivers began to pick up a ‘beep, beep, beep’ from outer space, which had not been expected on the international network. Unknown to the rest of the world, Russia had launched man’s first satellite at exactly 10:28:34 (Russian time) that morning.

Sputnik 1 was no more than a small ball less than two inches in diameter and weighing 200 pounds. But gradually, radio receivers and space watchers began to realise that they were witnessing an amazing moment in world history, with the stranger in the universe announcing its arrival with the odd beeping sound and a reflection from the sun’s rays adding to the spectacle of the cosmos in the evening skies.





At Munro College, during those evenings, we watched from the peak of the Santa Cruz mountains as the little dot came over the horizon to join the stars and planets that normally lit up the night sky. It was easily spotted as we had only the peenie wallies to contend with and no artificial Jamaica Public Service lighting to obscure our view.





The race reached its climax on July 16, 1969, when three American astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin — lifted off from Cape Canaveral, chartering their entry into space and into human history; their target, the moon. The world, including Moscow, watched breathlessly. From my room in Mona Heights that Sunday afternoon I cranked up my radio to follow the drama.





After three days in orbit around the moon, the Lunar Module "

Eagle" separated from its command unit, and slowly, but surely, Armstrong and Aldrin manoeuvred their craft into position, hovering over the surface, while Collins remained in orbit in the Command/Service "

Columbia".





In the eerie silence of outer space the duo landed quietly in the Sea Of Tranquility. The time was 3:17 pm, July 20, 1969. Then after a further six hours, Neil Armstrong became the first man in human history to step on the moon. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," were his first words.





One-fifth of the world’s population had witnessed that epoch-making moment. The Americans had won the race to the moon, and with it the famous Space Race.





Once again, the world is witnessing another seminal moment in the history of space exploration.

Juno has now gone into close orbit around Jupiter. There are exciting plans ahead for another manned return to the moon by 2020, to be followed by exploratory visits to the outer limits of space to be launched from the moon.





Man has an insatiable habit to go where no man has gone before. From birth we are moved to look, to search, to feel, to enquire, to ask why. Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the peak of Mount Everest. They did so on May 29, 1953. When asked what motivated him, Hillary’s answer was simple: "Because it’s there."











Lance Neita is a public and community relations consultant. Send comments to the Observer or

lanceneita@hotmail.com.





