Learning English

Welcome to Jupiter!

After a five-year, 2.8-billion km journey, Juno has arrived safely. Over the next 20 months it will circle Jupiter and send back new information about the giant planet.

Language challenge

What do we call the sun and the eight planets that revolve around it?

a) The sun system
b) The solar system
c) The planet system

Watch the video and complete the activity

The story

NASA has confirmed that the Juno spacecraft has entered into orbit around Jupiter after a five-year journey from Earth.

Scientists burst into applause when a signal sent back across 800 million kilometres of space confirmed the spacecraft's engine had fired for 35 minutes.

The $1.1bn probe will circle Jupiter for 20 months.

Rebecca Morelle – BBC News

We have been to Jupiter before. We've flown past it quite a few times – the first time way back in the 70s – but this is taking us closer in than we've ever been before and that's what makes this mission so risky because Jupiter is an incredibly hostile world.

The weather there's terrible. It has radiation streaming off of it, which is kind of going to absolutely battle the on-board electronics on the spacecraft.

But, we don't know so many things about it. We want to actually peer beneath the clouds for the first time to see what actually lies at the planet's core.

Key words and phrases

probe
(here) a device for gathering information

orbit
the circular path one object takes around another in space

spacecraft
vehicle used in space

hostile
(here) difficult or dangerous

core
(here) the centre

To do

Try our quiz to see how well you've learned today's language.

Downloads

You can download the audio and PDF document for this episode here.

Language challenge - answer

The answer is: b) The solar system

End of Session 2

Join us in Session 3 for Lingohack - our video which teaches you words from the news using the latest BBC World News bulletins.