Juno spacecraft returns its first image from Jupiter’s orbit

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back its first image since entering orbit around Jupiter just over a week ago, showing a sunlit region of the gas giant and three of its larger moons (Io, Europa and Ganymede) in a low-resolution photograph captured using its JunoCam instrument.

According to the US space agency, it will still be a few weeks until the probe will be able to take the first high-resolution images of Jupiter, but as BBC News noted, for now NASA scientists are just relieved to find out that Juno is in good shape following its exposure to harsh radiation while successfully completing orbital insertion maneuvers early last week.

“This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter’s extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter,” Scott Bolton, the principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, explained in a statement. “We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles.”

The image, pictured above, was captured on July 10 at 1:30pm EDT (10:30am PDT), when Juno was 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter on the outbound portion of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit, NASA noted. In addition to the three large moons, features depicted in the image included the Great Red Spot, the well-known persistent anticyclonic storm near Jupiter’s equator.

High-res photos due in August; science operations to begin in October

The plan is for JunoCam to continue taking low-resolution images as it completes its first orbit around the gas giant, according to Juno co-investigator Candy Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. The first high-resolution image is expected to be taken on August 27, when the spacecraft will make its next close pass to Jupiter, she added.

Currently, Hansen, Bolton and their colleagues in the process of activating each one of Juno’s instruments to ensure that they function as expected, BBC News said. If everything checks out, their next step will be to calibrate the spacecraft’s equipment. Provided no issues are found, the mission’s scientific operations will commence in October.

Juno will complete a total of 37 trips around Jupiter, including several that will take it beneath the planet’s cloud tops to within 2,600 miles (4,100 km) of its surface. These flybys will allow the probe to study the gas giant’s auroras, and to obtain new information about its atmosphere, magnetosphere, structure and its origins. The mission is scheduled to last 18 months.

As for JunoCam, while the visible-light camera was created to capture photographs of Jupiter, particularly its polar regions and its cloud tops, it is not considered to be one of the spacecraft’s scientific instruments, according to NASA. It was developed exclusively to help engage people and get them interested in the mission, and to that end, the agency is working to upload each of the images it captures to the project’s website so that the public can access them.

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Image credit: NASA

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