NASA’s Juno probe will fly over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in a historic mission on Monday night.
Juno’s flyover will be the closest look anyone has had of the 10,000-mile-wide storm scientists have been watching since 1830. The Great Red Spot itself is larger in diameter than Earth.
The spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit July 4, 2016, and has sent back many other images of Jupiter and several of its moons.
Juno has cloud-penetrating instruments to attempt to see under the storm and get an idea of how it works and why it has raged for so long, according to Fox News.
The probe will be about 2,200 miles above the clouds at 9:55 p.m. EDT Monday when it hits its closest point. It will be flying over the storm for less than 12 minutes.
The spacecraft will pass over the Great Red Spot several more times during its mission, about once every 53 days. Future plans are to measure the gravity field around the spot.
The images captured by Juno will take a few days to transmit to Earth because of the position of Juno’s antenna, NPR said.
The Juno probe is about the size of a basketball court and has been engaged in detailed analysis of the huge planet for over a year. The probe will keep going until 2018 or 2019, when it will dive into the clouds of Jupiter and presumably be destroyed.
Twitter fans speculated about what Juno might find.