Satellite and Legos goes to Jupiter

After almost a decade of building and testing the Mission Juno satellite -- a $1.1 billion spacecraft -- NASA officials placed the craft atop an Atlas V rocket Wednesday. It is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5.

Lift off is scheduled for 11:34.

This is an amazing mission as the satellite will be going into the eluive Jupiter's atmosphere, and hopefully give us some insight as to how the solar system was formed. I am excited about what they may discover under the very chaotic Jupiter atomosphere,

The mission will be unmanned with the exception of Legos.

The figurines are of Galileo, Juno, and of Jupiter.
Now your probably asking why they are sticking legos on the mission?
The article states that Lego is partnering up with Nasa to promite science,math and space exploration interest in children.


The satellite is going to take five years to travel to Jupiter.
cnn

A little bit more on the JUNO mission, and a cool interactive on one of the links here.

Lego Jupiter — the Roman god — and his Lego wife Juno will accompany the famed philosopher aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft when it launches on Friday bound for the largest planet in the solar system.

Why is Jupiter's wife holding a frying pan?
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e4d6b0f06a3c.gif[/atsimg]


I guess women haven't changed much after all these years.

For anyone in the UK who's interested in this, they're showing the launch live on sky news as we speak. There's also a slight delay it seems so they're now discussing other things as well.