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NASA Juno Jupiter

After parking in orbit July five, NASA'south Juno mission is fully operational and ready to start sending us back data. The instruments have successfully passed through Jupiter's extremely enervating magnetic environment and started powering on. JunoCam, which isn't even part of the science payload, is already up and taking pictures. Fifty-fifty though the high-res photostream is notwithstanding to come up, the mission staff take already fabricated a composite of the first images from JunoCam, and they show four of the big MVPs from Jupiter: Europa, Io, Ganymede, and the Great Ruby Spot (above).

JunoCam was sent to capture loftier-resolution images of Jupiter — colour images in the visible spectrum, non simulated-color belittling guesses. It's getting easier to get more and amend data from worlds beyond our own, and with JunoCam, NASA and the JPL hateful to really advance the frontier of scientific understanding about Jupiter. During its tenure around Jupiter, Juno volition make some 37 orbits, collecting data on Jupiter's origins, construction, atmosphere, and magnetosphere. JunoCam volition deed as Juno's optics, providing a wider view of the planet and its surroundings, and helping scientists to put data from the spacecraft's other instruments in context.

This illustration depicts NASA's Juno spacecraft at Jupiter, with its solar arrays and main antenna pointed toward the distant sun and Earth. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This illustration depicts NASA'south Juno spacecraft at Jupiter, with its solar arrays and main antenna pointed toward the distant dominicus and Earth. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The aerial overview is the whole point of JunoCam, but it'southward not the only useful thing the camera can exercise. At some points in its orbit, Juno will be close to the tops of Jupiter's clouds — about 2,600 miles above them. That puts the spacecraft close enough to peer hundreds of miles deep into the obscuring cloud embrace of Jupiter. Information technology will besides lookout Jupiter's poles, looking at its auroras to get a meliorate agreement of how they work.  Equally Phil Valek of the Southwest Enquiry Institute, part of the Juno projection, puts it: "Nosotros're trying to sympathize what's the same and what'southward unlike betwixt the auroras at Earth and Jupiter and so we can empathize the processes that create them in detail for the showtime fourth dimension. We'll be really successful when nosotros tin tell the earth how it really works, what particles are involved and why."

Equally yous might wait, though, the cloud comprehend is so thick that nosotros tin't see down very far. That'due south where Juno's other instrumentation comes in. Its microwave radiometer can encounter correct through the atmosphere, hundreds of miles down into the slush. Scientists have planned the Juno mission and then that they tin use the MWR to get a 3D structure of Jupiter's atmosphere. This volition requite us precious data on things like the anatomy of the Dandy Red Spot, and how deep information technology extends into the planet. When it comes to Jupiter's own structure, Juno besides carries equipment for measuring electrical currents, the direction and magnitude of magnetic field lines, and even its subconscious h2o content. Measurements like these will be important in our search to understand the history of Jupiter and our solar organisation; Jupiter'due south origins have been a bailiwick of much speculation, but we've had comparatively little hard data to back them up. Juno is set to alter all that.