Up to now, little has been known about the solar system's largest known planet, Jupiter.
But all that is set to change as NASA prepares to get its first close encounter with the planet.
NASA's Juno mission was launched in 2011, and, after years of trekking across space, it is now less than a month out from entering Jupiter's orbit.
"3 ... 2 ... 1 ... ignition ... and lift off of the Atlas 5 with Juno on a trek to Jupiter, a planetary piece of the puzzle on the beginning of our solar system."
In August 2011, scientists and engineers at NASA's Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida were abuzz with the successful launch of the Juno mission to Jupiter.
Five years on and more than 700 million kilometres later, the Juno spacecraft is preparing to reach its destination.
On July the 4th, the craft is expected to enter Jupiter's orbit, where it will spend a year circulating the planet.
In that time, Juno will study Jupiter for signs of a solid core and measure its water content.
Scott Bolton is the principal investigator behind the NASA mission.
He says the expedition is important because Jupiter may hold the answers to how planets formed an estimated 4.6 billion years ago from gas and dust left over from the sun.
"So, one of the first priority things is just to learn about how Jupiter formed: What is it like inside? What is it exactly made out of? How much water and oxygen are inside the planet? And how is it structured inside? So that we can put together the idea of how the rest of the solar system was made. How did Jupiter get made from the leftovers of the sun? And what does that tell us about how planets, in general, are made?"
To make its observations, Juno will fly as close as 5,000 kilometres from Jupiter's atmosphere.
That will make it the first-ever spacecraft to fly inside the planet's harsh radiation belts.
Given the intense radiation environment, Dr Bolton says extreme measures were taken in outfitting the spacecraft.
"Juno is probably the most shielded spacecraft ever flown. And we're moving faster than any spacecraft has ever gone. At the time that we arrive at Jupiter and fire our engines, we'll be the fastest human-made object in history. And so we're screaming past this planet, super close, in an intense radiation environment, and we've giving every advantage that we know to it by giving it ... It's the most armoured tank we've ever built."
Yet, as with all space missions, nothing is certain.
Juno is not yet in Jupiter's orbit and is still within the sun's pull.
In the lead-up to July the 4th, the Juno team has been evaluating the process it will use to thrust the spacecraft from the sun's orbit into Jupiter's.
Dr Bolton says the team has a short time for ensuring the craft makes it to Jupiter.
"So on July 4th is the day we make the transition from being in orbit around the sun to being in orbit around Jupiter, and we have to slow down so that we can get into orbit around Jupiter, and we have to fire a rocket at just the right time and for just the right amount of time, and we have to be facing in the right direction when we fire that rocket. And if that doesn't happen just right, you just fly right past Jupiter and that's it. You don't come back for, I don't know, 6,000 years, or something crazy like that. So you have to get into orbit there in order to have a mission."
If everything is successful, Juno will spend until February 2018 orbiting Jupiter before self-destructing.
The Juno mission is the second spacecraft designed under a new NASA program to explore new space frontiers.
The first was the Pluto mission, which flew by the dwarf planet in 2015 after a nine and a half year flight.
