In reading about NASA's latest remarkable achievement, orbiting the Juno spacecraft around the planet Jupiter, we were struck by something that Scott Bolton, one of the leaders of the Juno mission, said on the night of the Fourth of July:

"We just did the hardest thing NASA's ever done."

Harder than putting 12 astronauts on the moon? Harder than the Rube Goldberg-style soft landing on Mars by the Curiosity rover in 2012?

Those of us who have trouble getting anywhere on time must take Bolton at his word: Putting Juno into orbit around Jupiter precisely on time, five years after its launch, when it was traveling 165,000 miles an hour, faster than any made-made object has ever gone, was the hardest thing NASA's ever done.

Not the coolest, perhaps. Neil Armstrong is still the leader in the clubhouse there. But at a time when American astronauts must hitch rides to the International Space Station on Russian rockets, Juno reminds us that America is still exploring out on the final frontier.

Our short attention span nation has made it hard for NASA to maintain public interest (to say nothing of public funding) since the domestic element of human risk was removed in July 2011. NASA launched the Juno spacecraft just two weeks after the final space shuttle flight landed. Its public relations and engineering wizards had calculated precisely how long it would take to cover 1.7 billion miles and arrive on the Fourth of July in 2016.

Americans mostly yawned or watched fireworks. It takes a lot to engage the nation in the time of Trump, and that science stuff is pretty hard.

But it's worth it. As the surgeon/journalist Atul Gawande told this year's graduating class at California Institute of Technology: "What you have gained is far more important: an understanding of what real truth-seeking looks like. It is the effort not of a single person but of a group of people — the bigger the better — pursuing ideas with curiosity, inquisitiveness, openness, and discipline. As scientists, in other words. Even more than what you think, how you think matters."

In 18 months, Juno's systems will be irreparably damaged by radiation and it will be sent crashing into Jupiter. Before then, it will be gathering knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Most of us will never need to know the things Juno was sent out to learn: How much water is in its atmosphere? Will that answer confirm or refute current theories of planetary formation? What else is in its atmosphere? What's up with that intense magnetic field? Is there water on any of its 67 moons, and if there's water, is there life?

The Juno mission is costing taxpayers roughly $1.1 billion. What we find may well be worth it. That we looked for it surely is.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH