Juno is Ready to Tell Us What it Found at Jupiter

The tightly clustered storms that crowd Jupiter's polar regions are another of the gas giant's mysteries. In this image, cyclones the size of Earth bump up against each other at the south pole. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

Even a casual observer can see how complex Jupiter might be. Its Great Red Spot is one of the most iconic objects in our Solar System. The Great Red Spot, which is a continuous storm 2 or 3 times as large as Earth, along with Jupiter’s easily-seen storm cloud belts, are visual clues that Jupiter is a complex place.

We’ve been observing the Great Red Spot for almost 200 years, so we’ve known for a long time that something special is happening at Jupiter. Now that the Juno probe is there, we’re finding that Jupiter might be a more surprising place than we thought.

“There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.” – Scott Bolton, Juno’s Principal Investigator at the Southwest Research Institute.

So far, the stunning images delivered to us by the JunoCam have stolen the show. But Juno is a science mission, and the fantastic images we’re feasting on might stir the imagination, but it’s the science that’s at the heart of the mission.

Just one of the many beautiful images of Jupiter we're accustomed to seeing. NASA has invited interested citizens to process JunoCam images and has made them available for anyone to use. NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran © public domain — Just one of the many beautiful images of Jupiter we’re accustomed to seeing. NASA has invited interested citizens to process JunoCam images and has made them available for anyone to use. NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran © public domain

The Juno probe arrived at Jupiter in July 2016, and completed its first data-pass on August 27th, 2016. That pass took it to within 4,200 km of Jupiter’s cloud tops. Results from that first pass are being published in the journal Science and in Geophysical Research Letters.

Taken together, the results confirm what we might have guessed by just looking at Jupiter from afar: it is a stormy, complex, turbulent world.

“It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey.” – Diane Brown, Juno Program Executive.

“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey.”

Jupiter’s Magnetic Field

We’ve known for a long time that Jupiter has the most powerful magnetic field in the Solar System. In fact, the magnetic field is what shaped the design of the Juno probe, and the profile of the mission itself. Juno’s Magnetometer Investigation (MAG) has measured the gas giant’s magnetosphere up close, and these measurements tell us that the magnetic field is even stronger than anticipated, and its shape is more irregular as well. At 7.66 Gauss, the field is about 10 times more powerful than Earth.

The irregularities in the magnetic field are an indication that the field is generated closer to the surface than thought. Earth generates its magnetic field from it its rotating core, but because Jupiter’s is “lumpy”, or stronger in some regions than in others, the gas giant’s magnetic field might be generated above its metallic hydrogen layer.

Results from Juno's first data-pass suggest that Jupiter's powerful magnetic field is generated closer to the surface than previously thought. It may be generated above the core of metallic hydrogen. Image: By Kelvinsong - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31764016 — Results from Juno’s first data-pass suggest that Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field is generated closer to the surface than previously thought. It may be generated above the core of metallic hydrogen. Image: By Kelvinsong – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31764016

“Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we’ve never had before,” – Jack Connerney, Juno Deputy Principal Investigator

“Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we’ve never had before,” said Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator and the lead for the mission’s magnetic field investigation at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Already we see that the magnetic field looks lumpy: it is stronger in some places and weaker in others. This uneven distribution suggests that the field might be generated by dynamo action closer to the surface, above the layer of metallic hydrogen. Every flyby we execute gets us closer to determining where and how Jupiter’s dynamo works.”

Jupiter’s Atmosphere

Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) is designed to probe Jupiter’s thick atmosphere. It can detect the thermal microwave radiation in the atmosphere, both at the surface, and much deeper. Data from the MWR shows us that the storm belts are mysteries themselves.

The belts near Jupiter’s equator extend deep into the atmosphere, while other belts seem to evolve and transform into other structures. The MWR can probe a few hundred kilometers into the atmosphere, where it has found variable and increasing amounts of ammonia to that depth.

Polar Regions and Auroras

Jupiter is home to intense aurora activity at both poles. One of Juno’s mission goals is to study those auroras and the powerful polar magnetic fields that create them. Initial observations from Juno suggest that they are formed differently than Earthly auroras.

Juno is in a unique position to study the magnetosphere and the auroras. Its elongated polar orbit allows it to span the entire magnetosphere all the way from the bow shock to the planet itself.

The tilt of Juno's orbit relative to Jupiter changes over the course of the mission, sending the spacecraft increasingly deeper into the planet's intense radiation belts. This also gives Juno the ability to study the structure of the magnetosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — The tilt of Juno’s orbit relative to Jupiter changes over the course of the mission, sending the spacecraft increasingly deeper into the planet’s intense radiation belts. This also gives Juno the ability to study the structure of the magnetosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

According to the paper detailing the initial data on Jupiter’s magnetosphere an auroras, many of the observations have “terrestrial analogs.” But other aspects are very Jovian, and have no counterpart on Earth.

“…a radically different conceptual model of Jupiter’s interaction with its space environment.” – from J. E. P. Connerney et. al., 2017

As the authors say in their summary, “We observed plasmas upwelling from the ionosphere, providing a mechanism whereby Jupiter helps populate its magnetosphere. The weakness of the magnetic field-aligned electric currents associated with the main aurora and the broadly distributed nature of electron beaming in the polar caps suggest a radically different conceptual model of Jupiter’s interaction with its space environment.”

Polar Storms

JunoCam has also found some puzzling features in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The poles themselves are populated by densely clustered, swirling storms the size of Earth. Since they’ve only been observed briefly, there are a host of unanswered questions about them.

“We’re puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn’t look like the south pole.” – Scott Bolton, Juno’s Principal Investigator at the Southwest Research Institute

“We’re puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn’t look like the south pole,” said Bolton. “We’re questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage, and over the next year, we’re going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”

The Great Red Spot: Juno’s Next Target

Juno’s purposeful orbit takes it extremely close to the cloud tops, where it can perform powerful science. But the orbit also takes it a long way from Jupiter. Every 53 days it takes another plunge at Jupiter, where it gathers its next set of observations.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new.” – Scott Bolton, Juno’s Principal Investigator at the Southwest Research Institute.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” said Bolton. “On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system — one that every school kid knows — Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments.”

The JunoCam's next target: Jupiter's iconic Great Red Spot. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko — Juno’s next target: Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko

During each pass, Juno collects about 6 megabytes of data, which it sends back to Earth via the Deep Space Network. After that, the data is analyzed and published.

Juno has many more fly-bys of Jupiter before it’s sent to its end in the atmosphere of Jupiter. We can expect many more surprises, and hopefully some answers, between now and then.

May 7, 2017May 14, 2017 by Matt Williams

Does Jupiter Have a Solid Core?

Damian Peach reprocessed one of the latest images taken by Juno's JunoCam during its 3rd close flyby of the planet on Dec. 11. The photo highlights two large 'pearls' or storms in Jupiter's atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

The gas giants have always been a mystery to us. Due to their dense and swirling clouds, it is impossible to get a good look inside them and determine their true structure. Given their distance from Earth, it is time-consuming and expensive to send spacecraft to them, making survey missions few and far between. And due to their intense radiation and strong gravity, any mission that attempts to study them has to do so carefully.

And yet, scientists have been of the opinion for decades that this massive gas giant has a solid core. This is consistent with our current theories of how the Solar System and its planets formed and migrated to their current positions. Whereas the outer layers of Jupiter are composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, increases in pressure and density suggest that closer to the core, things become solid.

Structure and Composition:

Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter, with denser matter beneath. It’s upper atmosphere is composed of about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules, and approx. 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, with the remaining one percent consisting of other elements.

The atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds, as well as trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons. There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, and sulfur. Crystals of frozen ammonia have also been observed in the outermost layer of the atmosphere.

The interior contains denser materials, such that the distribution is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium and 5% other elements by mass. It is believed that Jupiter’s core is a dense mix of elements – a surrounding layer of liquid metallic hydrogen with some helium, and an outer layer predominantly of molecular hydrogen. The core has also been described as rocky, but this remains unknown as well.

In 1997, the existence of the core was suggested by gravitational measurements, indicating a mass of 12 to 45 times the mass of Earth, or roughly 4%–14% of the total mass of Jupiter. The presence of a core is also supported by models of planetary formation that indicate how a rocky or icy core would have been necessary at some point in the planet’s history. Otherwise, it would not have been able to collect all of its hydrogen and helium from the protosolar nebula – at least in theory.

However, it is possible that this core has since shrunk due to convection currents of hot, liquid, metallic hydrogen mixing with the molten core. This core may even be absent now, but a detailed analysis is needed before this can be confirmed. The Juno mission, which launched in August 2011 (see below), is expected to provide some insight into these questions, and thereby make progress on the problem of the core.

Formation and Migration:

Our current theories regarding the formation of the Solar System claim that the planets formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a Solar Nebula (i.e. Nebular Hypothesis). Consistent with this theory, Jupiter is believed to have formed as a result of gravity pulling swirling clouds of gas and dust together.

Jupiter acquired most of its mass from material left over from the formation of the Sun, and ended up with more than twice the combined mass of the other planets. In fact, it has been conjectured that it Jupiter had accumulated more mass, it would have become a second star. This is based on the fact that its composition is similar to that of the Sun – being made predominantly of hydrogen.

*Artist’s concept of a young star surrounded by a disk of gas and dust – called a protoplanetary disk. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech*

In addition, current models of Solar System formation also indicate that Jupiter formed farther out from its current position. In what is known as the Grand Tack Hypothesis, Jupiter migrated towards the Sun and settled into its current position by roughly 4 billion years ago. This migration, it has been argued, could have resulted in the destruction of the earlier planets in our Solar System – which may have included Super-Earths closer to the Sun.

Exploration:

While it was not the first robotic spacecraft to visit Jupiter, or the first to study it from orbit (this was done by the Galileo probe between 1995 and 2003), the Juno mission was designed to investigate the deeper mysteries of the Jovian giant. These include Jupiter’s interior, atmosphere, magnetosphere, gravitational field, and the history of the planet’s formation.

The mission launched in August 2011 and achieved orbit around Jupiter on July 4th, 2016. The probe entered its polar elliptical orbit after completing a 35-minute-long firing of the main engine, known as Jupiter Orbital Insertion (or JOI). As the probe approached Jupiter from above its north pole, it was afforded a view of the Jovian system, which it took a final picture of before commencing JOI.

Since that time, the Juno spacecraft has been conducting perijove maneuvers – where it passes between the northern polar region and the southern polar region – with a period of about 53 days. It has completed 5 perijoves since it arrived in June of 2016, and it is scheduled to conduct a total of 12 before February of 2018. At this point, barring any mission extensions, the probe will de-orbit and burn up in Jupiter’s outer atmosphere.

As it makes its remaining passes, Juno will gather more information on Jupiter’s gravity, magnetic fields, atmosphere, and composition. It is hoped that this information will teach us much about how the interaction between Jupiter’s interior, its atmosphere and its magnetosphere drives the planet’s evolution. And of course, it is hoped to provide conclusive data on the interior structure of the planet.

Does Jupiter have a solid core? The short answer is, we don’t know… yet. In truth, it could very well have a solid core composed of iron and quartz, which is surrounded by a thick layer of metallic hydrogen. It is also possible that interaction between this metallic hydrogen and the solid core caused the the planet to lose it some time ago.

*The South Pole of Jupiter, taken during the Juno mission’s third orbit (Perijove 3). Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/ Luca Fornaciari © cc nc sa*

At this point, all we can do is hope that ongoing surveys and missions will yield more evidence. These are not only likely to help us refine our understanding of Jupiter’s internal structure and its formation, but also refine our understanding of the history of the Solar System and how it came to be.

We have written many articles about Jupiter for Universe Today. Here Ten Interesting Facts About Jupiter, How Big is Jupiter?, How Long Does it Take to get to Jupiter?, What is the Weather Like on Jupiter?, How Far is Jupiter from the Sun?, and The Orbit of Jupiter. How Long is a Year on Jupiter?

If you’d like more information on Jupiter, check out Hubblesite’s News Releases about Jupiter, and here’s a link to NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide to Jupiter.

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast just about Jupiter. Listen here, Episode 56: Jupiter.

Sources:

April 8, 2017April 28, 2017 by Matt Williams

Hubble Takes Advantage Of Opposition To Snap Jupiter

Image of Jupiter, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope when the planet was at a distance of 670 million kilometers from Earth. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon (GSFC)

On April, 7th, 2017, Jupiter will come into opposition with Earth. This means that Earth and Jupiter will be at points in their orbit where the Sun, Earth and Jupiter will all line up. Not only will this mean that Jupiter will be making its closest approach to Earth – reaching a distance of about 670 million km (416 million mi) – but the hemisphere that faces towards us will be fully illuminated by the Sun.

Because of its proximity and its position, Jupiter will be brighter in the night sky than at any other time during the year. Little wonder then why NASA and the ESA are taking advantage of this favorable alignment to capture images of the planet with the Hubble Space Telescope. Already, on April 3rd, Hubble took the wonderful color image (shown above) of Jupiter, which has now been released.

Using its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), Hubble was able to observe Jupiter in the visible, ultraviolet and infrared spectrum. From these observations, members of the Hubble science team produced a final composite image that allowed features in its atmosphere – some as small as 130 km across – to be discernible. These included Jupiter’s colorful bands, as well as its massive anticyclonic storms.

*Image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, taken by the Voyager 1 space probe during its flyby on March 5, 1979, and re-processed on November 6, 1998. Credit: NASA/JPL*

The largest of these – the Great Red Spot – is believed to have been raging on the surface ever since it was first observed in the 1600s. In addition, it is estimated that the wind speeds can reach up to 120 m/s (430 km/h; 267 mph) at its outer edges. And given its dimensions – between 24-40,000 km from west to east and 12-14,000 km from south to north – it is large enough to swallow the Earth whole.

Astronomers have noticed how the storm appears to have been shrinking and expanding throughout its recorded history. And as the latest images taken by Hubble (and by ground-based telescopes) have confirmed, the storm continues to shrink. Back in 2012, it was even suggested that the Giant Red Spot might eventually disappear, and this latest evidence seems to confirm that.

No one is entirely sure why the storm is slowly collapsing; but thanks to images like these, researchers are gaining a better understanding of what mechanisms power Jupiter’s atmosphere. Aside from the Great Red Spot, the similar but smaller anticyclonic storm in the farther southern latitudes – aka. Oval BA or “Red Spot Junior” – was also captured in this latest image.

Located in the region known as the South Temperate Belt, this storm was first noticed in 2000 after three small white storms collided. Since then, the storm has increased in size, intensity and changed color (becoming red like its “big brother”). It is currently estimated that wind speeds have reached 618 km/h (384 mph), and that it has become as large as Earth itself (over 12,000 km, 7450 mi in diameter).

*Image of Jupiter, made during the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) programme on January 19th, 2015. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon (GSFC)/M. Wong (UC Berkeley)/G. Orton (JPL-Caltech)*

And then there are the color bands that make up Jupiter’s surface and give it its distinct appearance. These bands are essentially different types of clouds that run parallel to the equator and differ in color based on their chemical compositions. Whereas the whiter bands have higher concentrations of ammonia crystals, the darker (red, orange and yellow) have lower concentrations.

Similarly, these color patterns are also affected by the upwelling of compounds that change color when they are exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun. Known as chromophores, these colorful compounds are likely made up of sulfur, phosphorous and hydrocarbons. The planet’s intense wind speeds of up to 650 km/h (~400 mph) also ensure that the bands are kept separate.

These and other observations of Jupiter are part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) progamme. Dedicated to ensuring that Hubble gets as much information as it can before it is retired – sometime in the 2030s or 2040s – this program ensures that time is dedicated each year to observing Jupiter and the other gas giants. From the images obtained, OPAL hopes to create maps that planetary scientists can study long after Hubble is decommissioned.

The project will ultimately observe all of the giant planets in the Solar System in a wide range of filters. The research that this enables will not only help scientists to study the atmospheres of the giant planets, but also to gain a better understanding of Earth’s atmosphere and those of extrasolar planets. The programme began in 2014 with the study of Uranus and has been studying Jupiter and Neptune since 2015. In 2018, it will begin viewing Saturn.

Further Reading: Hubble Space Telescope

March 26, 2017March 28, 2017 by Bob King

See Mercury At Dusk, New Comet Lovejoy At Dawn

Mercury requests the company of your gaze now through the beginning of April, when it shines near Mars low in the west after sunset. Created with Stellarium

March has been a busy month for planet and comet watchers. Lots of action. Venus, the planet that’s captured our attention at dusk in the west for months, is in inferior conjunction with the Sun today. Watch for it to rise before the Sun in the eastern sky at dawn in about a week.

Mercury like Venus and the Moon shows phases when viewed through a telescope. Right now, the planet is in waning gibbous phase. Stellarium

As Venus flees the evening scene, steadfast Mars and a new planet, Mercury keep things lively. For northern hemisphere skywatchers, this is Mercury’s best dusk apparition of the year. If you’d like to make its acquaintance, this week and next are best. And it’s so easy! Just find a spot with a wide open view of the western horizon, bring a pair of binoculars for backup and wait for a clear evening.

Plan to watch starting about 40 minutes after sundown. From most locations, Mercury will appear about 10° or one fist held at arm’s length above the horizon a little bit north of due west. Shining around magnitude +0, it will be the only “star” in that part of the sky. Mars is nearby but much fainter at magnitude +1.5. You’ll have to wait at least an hour after sunset to spot it.

Have a telescope? Check out the planet using a magnification around 50x or higher. You’ll see that it looks like a Mini-Me version of the Moon. Mercury is brightest when closest to full. Over the next few weeks, it will wane to a crescent while increasing in apparent size.

If you have any difficulty finding brilliant Jupiter and its current pal, Spica, just start with the Big Dipper, now high in the northeastern sky at nightfall. Use the Dipper’s handle to “arc to Arcturus” and then “jump to Jupiter.” Credit: Bob King

If you like planets, don’t forget the combo of Jupiter and Spica at the opposite end of the sky. Jupiter climbs out of bed and over the southeastern horizon about 9 p.m. local time in late March, but to see it and Spica, Virgo’s brightest star, give it an hour and look again at 10 p.m. or later. Quite the duo!

You’re not afraid of getting up with the first robins are you? If you set your alarm to a half hour or so before the first hint of dawn’s light and find a location with an open view of the southeastern horizon, you might be first in your neighborhood to spot Terry Lovejoy’s brand new comet. His sixth, the Australian amateur discovered C/2017 E4 Lovejoy on the morning of March 10th in the constellation Sagittarius at about 12th magnitude.

C/2017 E4 Lovejoy glows blue-green this morning March 26. Structure around the nucleus including a small jet is visible. The comet is currently in Aquarius and quickly moving north and will reach perihelion on April 23. Credit: Terry Lovejoy

The comet has rapidly brightened since then and is now a small, moderately condensed fuzzball of magnitude +9, bright enough to spot in a 6-inch or larger telescope. Some observers have even picked it up in large binoculars. Lovejoy’s comet should brighten by at least another magnitude in the coming weeks, putting it within 10 x 50 binocular range.

This map shows the sky tomorrow morning before dawn from the central U.S. (latitude about 41° north). Created with Stellarium

Good news. E4 Lovejoy is moving north rapidly and is now visible about a dozen degrees high in Aquarius just before the start of dawn. I’ll be out the next clear morning, eyepiece to eye, to welcome this new fuzzball from beyond Neptune to my front yard. The map above shows the eastern sky near dawn and a general location of the comet. Use the more detailed map below to pinpoint it in your binoculars and telescope.

This chart shows the comet’s position nightly (5:30 a.m. CDT) through April 9. On the morning of April 1 it passes just a few degrees below the bright globular cluster M15. Click to enlarge, save and then print out for use at the telescope. Map: Bob King, Source: Chris Marriott’s SkyMap

Spring brings with it a new spirit and the opportunity to get out at night free of the bite of mosquitos or cold. Clear skies!

March 25, 2017April 4, 2017 by Evan Gough

Juno’s Monday Jupiter Flyby Promises New Batch of Images & Science

This image of Jupiter from the Juno probe shows an intricate dance of storms and swirls. The enhanced color image was captured on February 2nd, from only 14,500 km above the gas giant's cloud tops. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko

Juno is only part way through its mission to Jupiter, and already we’ve seen some absolutely breathtaking images of the gas giant. On Monday, the Juno spacecraft will flyby Jupiter again. This will be the craft’s 5th flyby of the gas giant, and it’ll provide us with our latest dose of Jupiter science and images. The first 4 flybys have already exceeded our expectations.

Juno will approach to within 4,400 km of Jupiter’s cloud tops, and will travel at a speed of 207,600 km/h. During this time of closest approach, called a perijove, all of Juno’s eight science instruments will be active, along with the JunoCam.

The JunoCam is not exactly part of the science payload. It was included in the missions to help engage the public with the mission, and it appears to be doing that job well. The Junocam’s targets have been partly chosen by the public, and NASA has invited anyone who cares to to download and process raw Junocam images. You can see those results throughout this article.

This image of Jupiter’s dancing cloud tops was captured during perijove 3. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kootenay Nature Photos © cc nc sa

This is Juno’s 5th flyby, but only its 4th science pass. During Juno’s first encounter with Jupiter, the science instruments weren’t active. Even so, after only 3 science passes, we have learned some things about Jupiter.

“We are excited to see what new discoveries Juno will reveal.” – Scott Bolton, NASA’s Principal Investigator for the Juno Mission

“This will be our fourth science pass — the fifth close flyby of Jupiter of the mission — and we are excited to see what new discoveries Juno will reveal,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Every time we get near Jupiter’s cloud tops, we learn new insights that help us understand this amazing giant planet.”

We’ve already learned that Jupiter’s intense magnetic fields are much more complicated than we thought. We’ve learned that the belts and zones in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which are responsible for the dazzling patterns on the cloud tops, extend much deeper into the atmosphere than we thought. And we’ve discovered that charged material expelled from Io’s volcanoes helps cause Jupiter’s auroras.

The South Pole of Jupiter, taken during perijove 3. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Luca Fornaciari © cc nc sa

Juno has the unprecedented ability to get extremely close to Jupiter. This next flyby will bring it to within 4,400 km of the cloud tops. But to do so, Juno has to pay a price. Though the sensitive equipment on the spacecraft is protected inside a titanium vault, Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts will still take a toll on the electronics. But that’s the price Juno will pay to perform its mission.

Jupiter’s dazzle as revealed by JunoCam and Shane Drever. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Shane Drever © cc nc sa

Other missions, like Cassini, have been measured in years, while Juno’s will be measured in orbits. And once it’s completed its final orbit, it will be sent to its destruction in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

But before that happens, there’s a lot of science to be done, and a lot of stunning images to be captured.

Here’s an interview with the man leading the Juno Mission: Understanding Juno’s Orbit: An Interview with NASA’s Scott Bolton.

Here is the page for the JunoCam: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam

March 22, 2017 by Fraser Cain

Why Doesn’t Earth Have Rings?

Before we really get started on today’s episode, I’d like to share a bunch of really cool pictures created by my friend Kevin Gill. Kevin’s a computer programmer, 3-D animator and works on climate science data for NASA.

And in his spare time, he uses his skills to help him imagine what the Universe could look like. For example, he’s mapped out what a future terraformed Mars might look like based on elevation maps, or rendered moons disturbing Saturn’s rings with their gravity.

Earth’s Rings over San Bernadino. Credit: Kevin Gill (CC BY-SA 2.0)

But one of my favorite sets of images that Kevin did were these. What would it look like if Earth had rings? Kevin and his wife went to a few cool locations, took some landscape pictures, and then Kevin did the calculations for what it would look like if Earth had a set of rings like Saturn.

And let me tell you, Earth would be so much better. At least you’d think so, but actually, it might also suck.

Last time I checked, we don’t have rings like this. In fact, we don’t have any rings at all.

Why not? Considering the fact that Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune all have rings, don’t we deserve at least something?

Did we ever have rings in the past, or will we in the future? What’s it going to take for us to join the ring club? Short answer, an apocalypse.

Before we get into the inevitable discussion of death and devastation, let’s talk a bit about rings.

A lovely view of Saturn and its rings as seen by the Cassini spacecraft on Aug. 12, 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Saturn is the big showboat, with its fancy rings. They’re made of water ice, with chunks as big as a mountain, or as small as a piece of sand. Astronomers have been arguing about where they came from and how old they are, but the current consensus – sort of – is that the rings are almost as ancient as Saturn itself: billions of years old. And yet, some process is weathering the rings, grinding the particles so they appear much younger.

Jupiter’s rings. Image Credit: University of Maryland

Jupiter’s rings are much fainter, and we didn’t even know about them until 1979, when the Voyager spacecraft made their flybys. The rings seem to be created by dust blown off into space by impacts on the planet’s moons.

Hey, we’ve got a moon, that’s a sign.

Uranus imaged by Voyager 2 in 1986. Credit: NASA

The rings around Uranus are bigger and more complex than Jupiter’s rings, but not as substantial as Saturn’s. They’re much younger, perhaps only 600 million years old, and appear to have been caused by two moons crashing into each other, long ago.

Again, another sign. We still have the potential for stuff to crash around us.

The labeled ring arcs of Neptune as seen in newly processed data. The image spans 26 exposures combined into a equivalent 95 minute exposure, and the ring trace and an image of the occulted planet Neptune is added for reference. Credit: M. Showalter/SETI Institute

The rings around Neptune are far dustier than any of the other ring systems, and much younger than the Solar System. And like the rings around Uranus, they were probably formed when two or more of its moons collided together.

Now what about our own prospects for rings?

The problem with icy rings is that the Earth orbits too closely to the Sun. There’s a specific point in the Solar System known as the “frost line” or “snow line”. This is the point in the Solar System where deposits of ice could have survived for long periods of time. Any closer and the radiation from the Sun sublimates the ice away.

This point is actually located about 5 astronomical units away from the Sun, in the asteroid belt. Mars is much closer, so it’s very dry, while Jupiter is beyond the frost line, and its moons have plenty of water ice.

The Earth is a mere 1 AU from the Sun. That’s the very definition of an astronomical unit, which means it’s well within the frost line. The Earth itself can maintain water because the planet’s magnetosphere acts like a shield against the solar wind. But the Moon is bone dry (except for the permanently shadowed craters at its poles).

And if there was an icy ring system around the Earth, the solar wind would have blasted it away long ago.

Instead, let’s look at another kind of ring we can have. One made of rock and dust, containing death and sorrow, from a pulverized asteroid or moon. In fact, billions of years ago, we definitely had a ring when a Mars-sized planet crashed into the Earth and spewed out a massive ring of debris. This debris collected together into the Moon we know today. That impact turned the Earth’s surface inside out. It was all volcanoes, everywhere, all the time.

It’s also possible we had a second moon in the ancient past, which collided with our current Moon. That would have generated an all new ring of material for millions of years until it was recaptured by the Moon, kicked out of orbit, or fell down onto the Earth.

It’s that “fell down onto Earth” part that’s apocalyptic. As mountains of ring material entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it would increase the temperature, baking and boiling away any life that couldn’t burrow deep underground.

It’s kind of like the book Seveneves, which you should totally read if you haven’t already. It talks about what we would see if the Moon broke apart into a ring, and the terrible terrible thing that happens next.

Earth’s Rings from New Hampshire. Credit: Kevin Gill (CC BY-SA 2.0)

If Earth did get a set of rings, they’d be pretty, but they’d also be a huge pain for astronomers. As you saw in Kevin’s original pictures, the rings take up a huge chunk of the sky for most observers. The farther north or south you go, the more dramatically the rings will ruin your view. Only if you were right at the equator, you’d have a thin line, which would be borderline acceptable.

Furthermore, the rings themselves would be incredibly reflective, and completely ruin the whole concept of dark skies. You know how the Moon sucks for astronomy? Rings would be way way worse.

Finally, rings would interfere with our ability to launch spacecraft and maintain satellites. It depends on how far they extend, but we wouldn’t be able to have any satellites in that region or cross the ring plane. Oh, and that fiery death apocalypse I mentioned earlier.

We know that the Moon is drifting away from the Earth right now thanks to the conservation of angular momentum. But in the distant future, billions of years from now, there might be a scenario that turns everything around.

The Sun’s habitable zone in its red giant phase. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

As you know, when it runs out of fuel in its core, the Sun is going to bloat up as a red giant, consuming Mercury and Venus. Scientists are on the fence about Earth. Some think that Earth will be fine. The Sun will blast off its outer layers, but not actually envelop Earth. Others think that at the Sun’s largest point, we’ll be orbiting within the outer atmosphere of the Sun. Ouch, that’s hot.

The orbiting Moon will experience drag as it goes around the Earth, slowing down its orbital velocity, and causing it to spiral inward. Once it reaches the Roche Limit of the Earth, about 9,500 km, our planet’s gravity will tear the Moon apart into a ring. The chunks in the ring will also experience drag in the solar atmosphere and continue to spiral inward until they crash into the planet.

The Moon tearing apart to become a ring around Earth. Credit: Universe Sandbox ²

That would be considered a very bad day, if it wasn’t for the fact that we were already living inside the atmosphere of the Sun. No amount of terraforming will fix that.

Sadly, the Earth doesn’t have rings like Saturn, and it probably never did. It might have had rings of rock and dust for periods, but they weren’t that majestic to look at. In fact, seeing rings around the planet would mean we’d lost a moon, and our planet was about go through a period of bombardment. I’ll pass.

February 18, 2017 by Matt Williams

Juno Will Get No Closer To Jupiter Due To Engine Troubles

Jupiter’s south pole. captured by the JunoCam on Feb. 2, 2017, from an altitude of about 62,800 miles (101,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/John Landino

On July 4th, 2016, the Juno mission established orbit around Jupiter, becoming the second spacecraft in history to do so (after the Galileo probe). Since then, the probe has been in a regular 53.4-day orbit (known as perijove), moving between the poles to avoid the worst of its radiation belts. Originally, Juno’s mission scientists had been hoping to reduce its orbit to a 14-day cycle so the probe could make more passes to gather more data.

To do this, Juno was scheduled for an engine burn on Oct. 19th, 2016, during its second perijovian maneuver. Unfortunately, a technical error prevented this from happening. Ever since, the mission team has been pouring over mission data to determine what went wrong and if they could conduct an engine burn at a later date. However, the mission team has now concluded that this won’t be possible.

The technical glitch which prevented the firing took place weeks before the engine burn was scheduled to take place, and was traced to two of the engines helium check valves. After the propulsion system was pressurized, the valves took several minutes to open – whereas they took only seconds during previous engine burns. Because of this, the mission leaders chose to postpone the firing until they could get a better understanding of why the glitch happened.

This amateur-processed image was taken on Dec. 11th, 2016, at 9:27 a.m. PST (12:27 p.m. EST), as NASA’s Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Eric Jorgensen

And after pouring over mission data from the past few months and performing calculations on possible maneuvers, Juno’s science team came to the conclusion that an engine burn might be counter-productive at this point. As Rick Nybakken, the Juno project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), explained in a recent NASA press release:

“During a thorough review, we looked at multiple scenarios that would place Juno in a shorter-period orbit, but there was concern that another main engine burn could result in a less-than-desirable orbit. The bottom line is a burn represented a risk to completion of Juno’s science objectives.”

However, this is not exactly bad news for the mission. It’s current perijove orbit takes it from one pole to the other, allowing it to pass over the cloud tops at a distance of around 4,100 km (2,600 mi) at its closest. At its farthest, the spacecraft reaches a distance of 8.1 million km (5.0 million mi) from the gas giant, which places it far beyond the orbit of Callisto.

During each pass, the probe is able to peak beneath the thick clouds to learn more about the planet’s atmosphere, internal structure, magnetosphere, and formation. And while a 14-day orbital period would allow for it to conduct 37 orbits before its mission is scheduled to wrap up, its current 53.4-day period will allow for more information to be collected on each pass.

And as Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, declared:

“Juno is healthy, its science instruments are fully operational, and the data and images we’ve received are nothing short of amazing. The decision to forego the burn is the right thing to do – preserving a valuable asset so that Juno can continue its exciting journey of discovery.”

In the meantime, the Juno science team is still analyzing the returns from Juno’s four previous flybys – which took place on August 27th, October 19th, December 11th, and February 2nd, 2017, respectively. With each pass, more information is revealed about the planet’s magnetic fields, aurorae, and banded appearance. The next perijovian maneuver will take place on March 27th, 2017, and will result in more images and data being collected.

Before the mission concludes, the Juno spacecraft will also explore Jupiter’s far magnetotail, its southern magnetosphere, and its magnetopause. The mission is also conducting an outreach program with its JunoCam, which is being guided with assistance of the public. Not only can people vote on which features they want imaged with every flyby, but these images are accessible to “citizen scientists” and amateur astronomers.

Under its current budget plan, Juno will continue to operate through to July 2018, conducting a total of 12 science orbits. At this point, barring a mission extension, the probe will be de-orbited and burn up in Jupiter’s outer atmosphere. As with the Galileo spacecraft, this will be as to avoid any possibility of impact and biological contamination with one of Jupiter’s moons.

Further Reading: NASA

February 11, 2017February 15, 2017 by Matt Williams

91 Astronomers Combine 1000 Images Into One Amazing Journey to Jupiter

Using 1,000 images taken by 91 amateurs from around the world, Peter Rosen has created a high-resolution film of Jupiter's dynamic atmosphere. Credit: Peter Rosén et al. via YouTube

A renewed era of space exploration is underway. Compared to the Space Race of the 20th century, which was characterized by two superpowers locked in a game of “getting there first”, the new era is defined predominantly by cooperation and open participation. One way in which this is evident is the role played by “citizen scientists” and amateur astronomers in exploration missions.

Consider the recently-released short film titled “A Journey to Jupiter” by Peter Rosen – a photographer and digital artist in Stockholm, Sweden. Using over 1000 images taken by amateur planetary photographers from around the world, this film takes viewers on a virtual journey to the Jovian planet, showcasing its weather patterns and dynamic nature in a way that is truly inspiring.

The images that went into making this video were collected by over 91 amateur astronomers over the course of three and a half months (between December 19th, 2014 and March 31st, 2015). After Rosen collected them, he and his associates (Christoffer Svenske and Johan Warell) then spent a year remapping them into cylindrical projections. Rosen then added color corrections, and stitched all the images into a total of 107 maps.

Much like fast-motion videos that illustrate weather patterns on Earth, or the passage of the stars across the night sky, the end result of was a film that shows the motions of Jupiter’s cloud belts and its Great Red Spot in high-resolution. Some 250 revolutions of the planet are illustrated, including from the equatorial band, the south pole, and the north pole.

As Rosen told Universe Today via email, this project was the latest in a lifelong pursuit of making astronomy accessible to the public:

“I have been into Astronomy since I was a teenager in the early 1970’s and immediately I got a passion for astrophotography, and more specifically, photographing the planets. I see astronomy as a life-long passion, so it is quite normal to strive for an evolution in what you do. I had an idea growing slowly for some years that it should be possible to animate the cloud belts of Jupiter and reveal the intricate dynamics of its flows, not just taking still pictures that might point to the changes in the structures but without the obvious visual dynamics of an animation.”

“A Journey to Jupiter” was also Rosen’s contribution to the Mission Juno Pro-Amateur Collaboration Project, of which he is part. Established by Glenn Orton of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this effort is one of several that seeks to connect amateurs and professionals in support of space exploration. Back in May of 2016, this group met in Nice, France, for a workshop dedicated to projects and techniques related to Jupiter observations.

*Still-pic from Rosen’s “A Journey to Jupiter” video. Credit: Peter Rosen et al via Youtube.*

Among other items discussed was the limitations that missions like Juno have to deal with. While it is capable of taking very-high resolution images of Jupiter, these images are highly specific in nature. And before a team of mission scientists are able to color-correct them and stitch them together to create panoramas, etc., they are not always what you might call “visually stunning”.

However, Earth-based observatories are not hampered by this restriction, and can take multiple images of a planet over time that capture it as a whole. And thanks to the availability of sophisticated telescopes and imaging software, amateur astronomers are capable of making important contributions in this regard. And far from these being strictly for scientific purposes, there is also the added benefit of public engagement.

“This has been a very technical and scientifically correct project,” said Rosen, “but as a photographer and digital artist I also wanted to create a work of art that would inspire and appeal to people who are fascinated by the universe but who are not necessarily into astronomy.”

Of course, this does not detract from the scientific value that this film has. For example, it showcases the turbulent nature of Jupiter’s atmosphere in a way that is scientifically accurate. Hence why Ricardo Hueso Alonso – a physicist at the University of Basque Country and a member of the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory (PVOL) – plans to use the maps to measure Jupiter’s wind speeds at different latitudes.

On top of its artistic and scientific merit, “A Journey to Jupiter” also serves as a testament to the skill and capability of the today’s amateur astronomers and planetary photographers. And of course, it draws attention to the efforts of space missions such as Juno, which is currently skimming the clouds of Jupiter to obtain the most comprehensive information about the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field to date.

Not surprisingly, this is not the first film by Rosen that combines scientific accuracy and fast-motion visuals. The short film Voyager 3, released back in June of 2014, was an homage by Rosen and six other Swedish amateur astronomers to the Voyager 1 mission. As the probe made its 28-day final approach to Jupiter in 1979, it snapped what were the most detailed images of Jupiter at the time.

These images helped to improve our understanding of the gas giant, its atmosphere, and its moons. Among other things, hey revealed the turbulent nature of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and that the Great Red Spot had changed color since the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions had flown by in 1973 and 74. Produced 35 years later, Voyager 3 was an attempt to recreate this historic event using images taken by Swedish amateur astronomers using their own ground-based telescopes.

Over the course of 90 days, Rosen and his colleagues captured one million frames of Jupiter, which resulted in 560 still images of the planet. These were then stitched together using a series of software programs (Winjupos, Photoshop CS6, Fantamorph, and StarryNightPro+) to create a simulation that gives the impression of a probe approaching the planet – i.e. like a third Voyager mission, hence the name of the film.

“As Jupiter was ideally positioned high in the sky in 2013-2014 for us living far up in the northern hemisphere, I decided that it was the right moment to give it a try, so I contacted 6 other amateurs on our local forum that shared my passion for the planets,” Rosen said. “We photographed Jupiter as often as we could during a 3-month period and I took care of the processing of the images which took me a total of 6 months.”

It is an exciting time to be alive. Not only are a greater number of national space agencies taking part in the exploration of the Solar System; but more than ever, citizen scientists, amateurs and members of the general public are able to participate in a way that was never before possible.

To view more work by Peter Rosen, be sure to check out his page at Vimeo.

Further Reading: NASA

February 10, 2017February 11, 2017 by Bob King

This Is The Highest Resolution Image Of Europa We Have … For Now

This is the highest resolution image taken by Galileo at Europa — Jupiter’s 4th largest moon — until our next mission to the planet. It was obtained at an original image scale of 19 feet (6 meters) per pixel. The gray line down the middle resulted from missing data that was not transmitted by Galileo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the sequel to Stanley’s Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, black Monoliths multiply, converge and transform Jupiter into a new star. We next hear astronaut David Bowman’s disembodied voice with this message: “All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.” The newborn sun warms Europa, transforming the icy landscape into a primeval jungle. At the end, a single Monolith appears in the swamp, waiting once again to direct the evolution of intelligent life forms.

Europa’s cracked, icy surface imaged by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in 1998. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Stay away from Europa? No way. It’s just too fascinating a place with its jigsaw-puzzle ice sheets, crisscross valleys, miles of ice on top and a warm, salty ocean below. The movie was prescient — if you’re going to search for life elsewhere in the solar system, Europa’s one of the best candidates.

While we’ve sent spacecraft to photograph and study the icy moon during orbital flybys, no lander has yet to touch the surface. That may change soon. In early 2016, in response to a congressional directive, NASA’s Planetary Science Division began a pre-Phase A study to assess the science value and engineering design of a future Europa lander mission. In June 2016, NASA convened a 21-member team of scientists for the Science Definition Team (SDT). The team put together set of science objectives and measurements for the mission concept and submitted the report to NASA on Feb. 7.

This artist’s rendering illustrates a conceptual design for a potential future mission to land a robotic probe on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The lander is shown with a sampling arm extended, having previously excavated a small area on the surface. The circular dish on top is a combo high-gain antenna and camera mast, with stereo imaging cameras mounted on the back of the antenna. Three vertical shapes located around the top center of the lander are attachment points for cables that would lower the rover from a sky crane, the planned landing system for this mission concept. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The report lists three science goals for the mission. The primary goal is to search for evidence of life on Europa. The other goals are to determine the habitability of Europa by directly analyzing material from the surface, and to characterize the surface and subsurface to support future robotic exploration of Europa and its ocean.

This image from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft show the intricate detail of Europa’s icy surface. The red staining occurs in areas where briny waters from below — possibly mixed with sulfur — reach the surface. Radiation from Jupiter bombards the material, causing it to redden. Gravitational flexing of the moon as it orbits Jupiter fractures the icy crust into a chaotic landscape of snaking valleys and ice sheets. It also warms the ocean beneath the crust, potentially making it habitable. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The evidence is quite strong that Europa, with a diameter of 1,945 miles — slightly smaller than Earth’s moon — has a global saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust. This ocean has at least twice as much water as Earth’s oceans. Two things make Europa’s ocean unique and give the moon a greater chance of supporting microbial life compared to say, Ganymede and Enceladus, which also hold water reservoirs beneath their crusts.

Astronomers hypothesize that chloride salts bubble up from the icy moon’s global liquid ocean and reach the frozen surface where they are bombarded with sulfur from volcanoes on Jupiter’s innermost large moon Io. Molecular signs of life may be transported where they could be detected by a spacecraft. In this illustration, we see Europa (foreground), Jupiter (right) and Io (middle). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One: the ocean is relatively close to the surface, just 10-15 miles below the moon’s icy shell. Radiation from Jupiter (high-speed electrons and protons) bombards ice, sulfur and salts on the surface to create compounds that could trickle down into warmer regions and used by living things for growth and metabolism.

Broken plates and blocks of water ice now frozen in place in Europa’s crust suggest they floated freely for a time. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Two: While recent discoveries have shown that many bodies in the solar system either have subsurface oceans now, or may have in the past, Europa is one of only two places where the ocean appears to be in contact with a rocky seafloor (the other being Saturn’s moon Enceladus). This rare circumstance makes Europa one of the highest priority targets in the search for present-day life beyond Earth.

On Earth, chemical interactions between life and lifeless rock in deep oceans and within the outer crust provide the energy needed to power and sustain microbial life. For all we know, deep sea volcanoes belch essential elements into the salty waters spawned by the constant flexing and heating of the moon as it orbits Jupiter every 85 hours.

This mosaic of images includes the most detailed view of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa obtained by NASA’s Galileo mission. This observation was taken with the sun relatively high in the sky, so most of the brightness variations are due to color differences in the surface material rather than shadows. Ridge tops, brightened by frost, contrast with darker valleys, perhaps due to small temperature variations allow frost to accumulate in slightly colder, higher-elevation locations. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The SDT was tasked with developing a life-detection strategy, a first for a NASA mission since the Mars Viking mission era more than four decades ago. The report makes recommendations on the number and type of science instruments that would be required to confirm if signs of life are present in samples collected from the icy moon’s surface.

The team also worked closely with engineers to design a system capable of landing on a surface about which very little is known. Given that Europa has no atmosphere, the team developed a concept that could deliver its science payload to the icy surface without the benefit of technologies like a heat shield or parachutes.

This artist’s rendering shows NASA’s Europa mission spacecraft, which is being developed for a launch sometime in the 2020s. The spacecraft would orbit around Jupiter in order to perform a detailed investigation of Europa before a follow-up landing mission. The probe could look for “biosignatures” or molecular signs of life, such as the byproducts of metabolism, transported from the moon’s ocean to its surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The concept lander is separate from the solar-powered Europa multiple flyby mission, now in development for launch in the early 2020s. The spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter after a multi-year journey, orbiting the gas giant every two weeks for a series of 45 close flybys of Europa. The multiple flyby mission will investigate Europa’s habitability by mapping its composition, determining the characteristics of the ocean and ice shell, and increasing our understanding of its geology. The mission also will lay the foundation for a future landing by performing detailed reconnaissance using its powerful cameras.

We can’t help but be excited by the prospects of life-seeking missions to Europa. Sometimes wonderful things come in small packages.

February 5, 2017February 5, 2017 by Matt Williams

Juno Buzzes Jupiter a mere 4,300 Km’s above the Cloud Tops

Illustration of NASA's Juno spacecraft firing its main engine to slow down and go into orbit around Jupiter. Lockheed Martin built the Juno spacecraft for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin

On July 4th, 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made history when it became the second mission to establish orbit around Jupiter – the previous being the Galileo spacecraft, which orbited the planet from 1995 to 2003. Since that time, it has circled the massive gas giant three times, collecting data on the gas giant’s composition, interior and gravity field.

This past Thursday, February 1st, the mission conducted its fourth orbit of the planet. In the process, the spacecraft collected more vital data on the gas giant and snapped several dozen pictures. And in what is has been a first for a space mission, NASA will once again be asking the public what features they would like to see photographed during Juno’s next pass.

Juno made its closest pass (what is known as perijove) to Jupiter at precisely 1257 GMT (7:57 a.m. EST), passing the cloud tops at a distance of 4,300 km (2,670 mi) and traveling at a velocity of about 208,000 km/h (129,300 mph) relative to the gas giant. Using its suite of instruments, it scanned Jupiter’s atmosphere, gathered data on its radiation and plasma, and began returning this information to Earth.

Processed image taken on Dec. 11, 2016, at 9:27 a.m. PST (12:27 p.m. EST) by the NASA Juno spacecraft, as it performed its third close flyby of Jupiter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Eric Jorgensen

And during this latest pass, the JunoCam snapped several dozen more pictures. During two of its three previous perijove maneuvers, this instruments captured some of the most breathtaking photographs of Jupiter’s clouds to date (like the one seen above). Once they were transmitted back to Earth and made available to the public, “citizen scientists” were able to download and process them at their leisure.

And with this latest pass complete, the public is once again being encouraged to vote on what features they want to see photographed during the next pass. As Candy Hansen, the Juno mission’s co-investigator from the Planetary Science Institute, stated shortly before Juno made its fourth perijovian maneuver:

“The pictures JunoCam can take depict a narrow swath of territory the spacecraft flies over, so the points of interest imaged can provide a great amount of detail. They play a vital role in helping the Juno science team establish what is going on in Jupiter’s atmosphere at any moment. We are looking forward to seeing what people from outside the science team think is important.”

This has all been part of a first-ever effort on behalf of NASA to get the public involved in what kinds of images are to be taken. According to NASA, this is to become a regular feature of the Juno mission, with a new voting page being created for each upcoming flyby. The next perijovian maneuver will take place on March 27th, 2017, coinciding with the Juno spacecraft’s 53.4-day orbital period.

*False color view of Jupiter’s polar haze, created by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt using data from the JunoCam instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Eric Jorgensen*

Originally, the mission planners had hoped to narrow Juno’s orbital period down to 14 days, which would have been accomplished by having the craft fire its main engine while at perijove. However, two weeks before the engine burn was scheduled to take place (Oct. 19th, 2016), ground controllers noticed a problem with two of the engine’s check valves – which are part of the spacecraft’s fuel pressurization system.

As Juno project manager Rick Nybakken said at the time:

“Telemetry indicates that two helium check valves that play an important role in the firing of the spacecraft’s main engine did not operate as expected during a command sequence that was initiated yesterday. The valves should have opened in a few seconds, but it took several minutes. We need to better understand this issue before moving forward with a burn of the main engine.”

Because of this technical issue, the mission leaders chose to postpone the engine burn so they could check the craft’s instruments to get a better understanding of why it happened. The Juno team was hoping to use the third orbit of the spacecraft to study the problem, but this was interrupted when a software performance monitor induced a reboot of the spacecraft’s onboard computer.

To accomplish its science objectives, Juno is orbiting Jupiter’s poles and passing very close to the planet, avoiding the most powerful (and hazardous) radiation belts in the process. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Because of this, the spacecraft went into safe mode during its third flyby, which prevented them from gathering data on the engine valve problem. On Oct. 24th, the mission controllers managed to get the craft to exit safe mode and performed a trim maneuver in preparation for its next flyby. But the mystery of why the engine valves failed to open remains, and the mission team is still unable to resolve the problem.

Thus, the decision to fire the main engine (thereby shortening its orbital period) has been postponed until they get it back online. But as Scott Bolton – the Associate Director of R&D at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Juno’s Principal Investigator – has emphasized in the past:

“It is important to note that the orbital period does not affect the quality of the science that takes place during one of Juno’s close flybys of Jupiter. The mission is very flexible that way. The data we collected during our first flyby on August 27th was a revelation, and I fully anticipate a similar result from Juno’s October 19th flyby.”

In the meantime, the Juno science team is still analyzing data from all previous Jupiter flybys. During each pass, the spacecraft and its instruments peer beneath Jupiter’s dense cloud cover to study its auroras, its magnetic field, and to learn more about the planet’s structure, composition, and formation. And with the public’s help, it is also providing some of the clearest and most detailed imagery of the gas giant to date.

Further Reading: NASA