NASA’s Juno explorer launches on its 5-year journey to Jupiter

Seeing as how their is no Space shuttle anymore, we at least have this to look forward too.
One of the greatest things America has ever done is explored space, and with budgets being cut the private sector will take over; Boeing is starting a space taxi service.

The Bulletin
LOS ANGELES — NASA’s spacecraft Juno lifted off Friday in an incandescent arc over the Atlantic Ocean, the start of a five-year, 1.7 billion-mile trip to Jupiter that scientists believe will unlock some of the secrets behind the origin of the solar system.

Juno launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard an Atlas V rocket, soaring into warm, blue skies.

The craft then conducted two “burns” — bracketing a scheduled coast at 17,500 mph — to set it on the right trajectory.

Juno’s massive solar panels, configured like the spokes of a Ferris wheel, unfurled without a hitch, said Scott Bolton, the mission’s principal investigator and the director of space science at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute.