The Juno probe is due to reach Jupiter early on Tuesday after a five-year trip from Earth, coming closer to the planet than any previous spacecraft has done.
The armour-shielded, solar-powered spacecraft is to arrive after completing a 1.4 billion mile journey.
The $1.1 billion mission aims to look through Jupiter’s clouds and map the planet from above. Thought to have formed shortly after the sun, the planet may hold clues as to how the Earth and solar system itself developed.
The mission is not without risks. The craft will have to survive the radiation storm whipped up by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field, believed to be the harshest radiation environment in the solar system.
Juno’s computer and electronics are locked in a titanium vault to protect them from extreme radiation - equivalent to more than 100 million dental X-rays.
Dr Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator, from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, US, said: "We are not looking for trouble, we are looking for data.
‘You could find trouble’
“Problem is, at Jupiter, looking for the kind of data Juno is looking for, you have to go in the kind of neighbourhoods where you could find trouble pretty quick.”
Prof Peter Gallagher, lead researcher in solar physics and space weather at Trinity College Dublin, said the data collected by the mission will be of great interest to the university.
“As soon as we start term again we’ll start teaching the results.”
Prof Gallagher, a member of the European Space Agency's Space Science Advisory Committee, is also involved in the agency's upcoming Solar Orbiter project to explore the inner regions of the sun.
‘Growing area’
He described Ireland’s space science industry as a “growing area”, with about 2,000 jobs here related to the sector.
Unusually for a robotic space mission, Juno is carrying passengers - three Lego figures depicting 17th century Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and the deity’s wife, Juno.
The figures were custom-made of aluminium by Lego to give them the best chance of withstanding the harsh conditions of space travel.