The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday announce a new mission to study about Jupiter, fifth planet in Solar system, called Juno.

The mission will be the first in which a spacecraft is placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure.

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch aboard an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in August 2011, reaching Jupiter in 2016. The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter 32 times, skimming about 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles) over the planet's cloud tops for approximately one year. The mission will be the first solar powered spacecraft designed to operate despite the great distance from the sun.

NASA said this would be the first solar-powered spacecraft expected to be able to perform its duties so far from the sun. Jupiter is more than four times farther away from the sun as Earth, a total of around 400 million miles.