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Juno’s Latest Flight Over Jupiter’s South Pole
Animation of six images acquired by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on March 27, 2017.
On Monday, March 27, at 4:52 a.m. EDT (08:52 UTC) NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its fifth close pass of Jupiter, passing about 2,700 miles (4,400 km) above the planet’s clouds while traveling at a relative speed of 129,000 mph (57.8 kilometers per second). The images above, captured with the JunoCam instrument, show the giant planet’s south pole during this P5 pass.
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Juno Sends Back Its First Pictures of Jupiter’s North Pole; “Like Nothing We Have Seen Before”
Jupiter’s north pole imaged by Juno on Aug. 27, 2016 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS)
Thanks to NASA’s Juno spacecraft we now have our best views yet of the north pole of our Solar System’s largest planet and they’re “hardly recognizable as Jupiter” according to the mission’s lead scientist!
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Watch Juno’s Arrival at Majestic Jupiter, Moons and All
We are the stewards of over 400 years of scientific exploration of our Solar System, which it could be said began in earnest when Galileo Galilei first observed the motions of Jupiter’s moons in his homemade telescope in 1610. Over the centuries our knowledge—and our curiosity—about the seemingly endless variety of worlds in the Solar System has grown in leaps and bounds since Galileo’s first peeks at Jupiter, with increasingly more powerful telescopes both on Earth and in space and eventually even machines sent to join the planets in orbit around the Sun.
Last night NASA’s Juno spacecraft became humanity’s most recent emissary to the Solar System’s biggest planet, successfully performing the rocket burns needed to enter orbit around Jupiter—the first spacecraft to do so in 13 years. Amongst much excitement and deserved congratulations of the mission team, the video above was released showing Juno’s view as it approached the enormous planet the week before arrival after five years and 1.7 billion miles of travel. It’s dramatic and impressive and beautiful…just as it should be, considering the scope and achievement of the mission and the information that will soon be returned. Congratulations Juno!
“With Juno, we will investigate the unknowns of Jupiter’s massive radiation belts to delve deep into not only the planet’s interior, but into how Jupiter was born and how our entire solar system evolved.”
— NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
Learn more about the Juno mission here and visit the NASA site here.
(HT to Rachelle Williams @AstroAnarchy for the video tip.)
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Juno Just Hours from Jupiter Arrival
Juno is on its way to enter orbit at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Credit: NASA/JPL
After nearly 5 years of traveling through space NASA’s Juno spacecraft is just a few dozen hours away from entering orbit around Jupiter, the Solar System’s largest, most massive, and most extreme planet.
“We are ready,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). “The science team is incredibly excited to be arriving at Jupiter. The engineers and mission controllers are performing at an Olympic level getting Juno successfully into orbit. As Juno barrels down on Jupiter, the scientists are busy looking at the amazing approach science the spacecraft has already returned to Earth. Jupiter is spectacular from afar and will be absolutely breathtaking from close up.”
Learn more about the mission and find out how to watch the long-awaited event live below:
