Juno successfully completes first Jupiter flyby

On Saturday, NASA’s Juno mission successfully performed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter.

The probe passed approximately 2,600 miles above Jupiter’s clouds on what was planned to be its closest pass to the gas giant. At the time, Juno was traveling at 130,000 mph relative to the planet.

“Early post-flyby telemetry indicates that everything worked as planned and Juno is firing on all cylinders,” Rick Nybakken, a NASA Juno project manager, said in a statement.

Until its primary mission ends in February 2018, Juno will conduct 35 more close flybys of Jupiter. The flyby on Saturday was the first time the probe had its complete collection of science instruments switched on and investigating the massive planet as the spacecraft whizzed past.

“We are getting some intriguing early data returns as we speak,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). “It will take days for all the science data collected during the flyby to be downlinked and even more to begin to comprehend what Juno and Jupiter are trying to tell us.”

Data Coming in Over the Next Few Days

While data from the spacecraft’s instruments will be revealed in the near future, limited numbers of pictures from Juno’s visible light camera, called  JunoCam, are slated to be released fairly soon. Those pictures should include the highest-resolution views of the Jovian atmosphere and the first peek at Jupiter’s north and south poles.

“We are in an orbit nobody has ever been in before, and these images give us a whole new perspective on this gas-giant world,” Bolton said.

In addition to capturing never-before-seen views of Jupiter, the Juno mission will look into how much water is in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which helps determine if an existing planet formation theory is correct or if new theories are necessary. The probe will also peer deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere to assess structure, temperature, cloud motions and other properties.

Mission scientists said they are also hoping to chart Jupiter’s magnetic and gravity fields, which can reveal the planet’s deepest compositions. The probe will also investigate and study Jupiter’s magnetosphere around the planet’s poles, particularly Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, to gain new insights around how the planet’s immense magnetic pressure field impacts its atmosphere.

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Image credit: NASA

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