NASA's Jupiter spacecraft retransmits fascinating new photos of the gas giant



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Scientists studying Jupiter – and the space nerds fascinated by the gas giant – spent a busy and inspiring month. Last week, a team of researchers announced the discovery of 12 new Jovian moons, bringing to 79 the total number of Jupiter. Last week, scientists revealed that data from NASA's Juno mission suggested an unknown volcano on Jupiter's moon Io. And last month, the team behind Juno realized that Jupiter's lighting looked more like the Earth's than previously thought – which solved a 39-year-old mystery.

But the most exciting, NASA confirmed in June that Juno, who took off from Jupiter since July 2015, will cheat death for at least another three years. The probe was expected to fall into Jupiter's cloud this month, but the mission was extended at least until July 2021.

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This gives scientists a chance to complete the main objective of the mission: to map the magnetic and gravitational fields of Jupiter. This work is done by flying Juno on Jupiter's cloud tops at speeds around 75 times faster than a bullet. These overflights, called perijoves, occur once every 53.5 days. The most recent (14th edition of Juno) took place on July 16th and the previous one was held on May 24th.

High-speed travel has allowed NASA to document the gas giant like never before. An optical camera called JunoCam captures beautiful images of Jupiter every time, and the space agency downloads the raw data on its websites. People around the world can then download this data and turn it into beautiful color images.

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Here are 13 mesmerizing images of the latest perijove, with some highlights from past flybys.

Juno makes an elliptical orbit around Jupiter. It's a compromise between getting unprecedented new data and staying away from the planet's intense radiation field, which can damage sensitive electronic components.


During a perivove, the Juno spacecraft dives over Jupiter's North Pole, screams over Jovian peaks at over 200,000 km / h and comes out at the South Pole

NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran [19659012] While the spacecraft is close to Jupiter, Juno records the planet with radar systems, radiation detectors, magnetic and gravitational recorders, and more.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill

This high-contrast photo was processed by NASA software engineer Kevin M. Gill, who processes raw data from each perijove shortly after their availability. You can find more of his work on Twitter or Flickr.


Juno was the first spacecraft to fly above and below Jupiter, photograph the poles of the planet and begin to unravel their mysteries. Color treatment often gives a blue tint to storms near the poles

A 3D illustration of the stormy north pole of Jupiter made using infrared photos taken by the NASA Juno probe

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill


Researchers used data collected by Junon to model the North Pole strangled by the Jupiter storm in 3D

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / ASI / INAF / JIRAM

Juno can not have an image of the entire planet at a time. Jupiter is about 1,321 times larger than the Earth.

Björn Jónsson, an Icelandic computer scientist, recently badembled more than 100 images of the Juno Mission and the Cbadini Mission at Saturn to create this complete photographic map of Jupiter.

The large red spot of Jupiter looks like a red and lugubrious eye in this processed image of the 12th edition of Juno.

Björn Jónsson

Read more about Jónsson created the full and detailed map of Jupiter >>


Among the Juno fans, the photos of the Great Red Spot were a favorite, since the storm could easily swallow the Earth. The spacecraft did not photograph this area during the last flyby, although – the latest new images of the spot were captured in April 2018.

NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran (CC BY- NC-SA 2.0)


But Jupiter has many other landscapes and remarkable storms that swirl. This band of high altitude clouds is located in the northern hemisphere of the planet

NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstadt / Seán Doran


Storms and clouds of Jupiter form patterns which may seem as beautiful as beautiful. Seán Doran, a graphic designer who is one of JunoCam's most prolific data processors, created this picture. "Planet of Screaming Skulls" he called on Twitter

NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran


Doran also made this mysterious portrait of the planet, in which you can see the flickering myriad stars

An illustration of NASA's Juno probe flying over the superstructure of Jupiter's Great Red Spot

NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Brian Swift / Doran Seán

You Can See more of Doran's works on his Twitter or Flickr pages, and he also sells some of his Jupiter images as posters across the Redbubble platform


Although Juno continues to steer Jupiter until at least July 2021, NASA finally plans to destroy the robot.

Half of the frozen moon of Jupiter Europe seen by images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill ( CC BY 2.0)


The justification for this dramatic ending is similar to that behind the disappearance of the Cbadini probe at Saturn: the frozen moon of Jupiter Europa can be inhabited by extraterrestrial life, deliberately destroying Juno It will prevent it from crashing on this moon and contaminating everything in it.

Jupiter seen by the Juno probe during his 10th perijove.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute


For the next three years, however, we will continue to obtain incredible new series of images from the farthest solar-powered spacecraft ever launched from Earth .

NASA's Juno spacecraft flies over the clouds of Jupiter (see perijove 7)

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstadt / Sean Doran

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