Video: Juno’s countdown to Jupiter

NASA’s Juno spacecraft, now on its 11th orbit around Jupiter, continues to return jaw-dropping views of the solar systems’s biggest planet from previously-unseen up-close perspectives of its colorful clouds and raging storms.

Resembling a cocooned insect with antennas and appendages tucked snuggly to its body for launch, NASA’s latest communications relay hub will be shot into space Friday to blossom in geosynchronous orbit for routing signals to and from the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope and three dozen science observatories.

Culminating years of construction and testing, a $1.2 billion satellite designed to spot and track enemy missiles threatening the United States homeland, its deployed military forces abroad or allied nations will ascend to a surveillance post in space Thursday.