NASA’s Juno spacecraft sent its first picture of Jupiter after placing itself into orbit around the largest planetary inhabitant of the solar system. Rough cut (no reporter narration).
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On Sunday, JunoCam, the spacecraft’s visible light camera, turned on and snapped its first photos of its journey around the gas giant from about 2.7 million miles away.
Once the spacecraft loops back in, we will get our first close-up pictures of the gas giant.
The picture was taken on Saturday when the Juno spacecraft was circling three million miles away.
Visible in the image is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (a giant, spinning storm that is about three times bigger than Earth), and three of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons – Io, Europa and Ganymede.
Juno’s mission is scheduled to end in February 2018, and will culminate with an intentional death dive into the planet’s thick atmosphere.
Juno was bombarded with radiation as it neared Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.
To answer these questions the Juno probe has been equipped with nine specific instruments researcher’s back at NASA can use to measure the planet’s gravity, magnetic fields and radiation belts.
After the mission has ended, NASA scientists perform will perform two years of data analysis gathered from Juno’s 33 science orbits, and the public will have the benefit of seeing the most astounding views of Jupiter ever seen. We’ll start to see high-resolution images of the planet August 27, when Juno makes those first close passes.
Juno is now cruising away from the planet, toward the more distant parts of a highly elliptical, 53-day orbit.
“We’re quite pleased that we survived going through Jupiter orbit insertion”, said Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, a scientist at Planetary Science Institute in Tucson who is responsible for the operation of the camera.
Juno was launched by an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 5, 2011.
Although JunoCam’s images will be helpful to the science team, the primary objective of the images is to help with public engagement.
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It will take over 37 orbits, each lasting 14 days, for Juno to study the composition of Jupiter in depth. JunoCam will continue to image Jupiter during Juno’s capture orbits.
