Photos: Atlas 5 launches SBIRS GEO Flight 3

Setting up post at the king of planets, NASA’s Juno spacecraft fired its main engine for 35 minutes Monday, steering into orbit around Jupiter to peer inside the gas giant and give scientists a better idea of how the solar system took shape 4.6 billion years ago.

Standing on a seaside launch pad overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a Minotaur-C rocket is set for launch Tuesday from California’s Central Coast with 10 Earth observation satellites manufactured in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Weeks after leaving its factory in New Orleans, the core stage for NASA’s first Space Launch System flight has been raised into a test stand at the Stennis Space Center to begin a series of checkouts culminating in an eight-minute engine-firing later this year.