Amateur Images Show Juno's 'Slingshot' Around Earth Was a Success

Juno_Spacecraft_I89_09_October_2013.jpg

With the government shutdown, news out of NASA is sometimes sparse. But thankfully amateur astronomers can fill in some of the holes! While Juno's project manager Rick Nybakken has

confirmed that the spacecraft successfully completed its slingshot flyby of Earth yesterday,

images taken by amateur astronomers around the world also conclusively confirm that Juno is now "bang on target!" tweeted

Nick Howes

of the Remanzacco Observatory team. This image from Howes, Ernesto Guido and Martino Nicolini shows the path of Juno across the sky, as seen from a remote telescope in Spain. "The spacecraft is trailed in the image due to its fast speed," the team wrote

on their website

, and extrapolations of Juno's orbit shows it is heading straight for Jupiter.

You can see a gallery of images of Juno's flyby taken by amateurs on this

SpaceWeather.com page.

Meanwhile, there are some concerns about the spacecraft going into safe mode immediately after the flyby. Our previous article by Ken Kremer reported that the mission teams are assessing the situation, and that the spacecraft is "power positive."

One idea of why the spacecraft went into safe mode is that the battery was being depleted faster than anticipated, but the team is still working to confirm the reason.

Closest approach was at 12:21 PM PST (19:21 UTC, 3:21 PM EDT).

For more information about the flyby, check out this new video from Bill Nye the Science Guy -- who has a new video series called

"Why With Nye."

[caption id="attachment_105438" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

Juno's flyby path, via Heaven's Above. [/caption]

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com