Juno is sending in the first images of Jupiter from its JunoCam and the views are exciting. The NASA probe entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4 and the visible-light camera was turned on six days later. It will be a few weeks more before the first high-resolution images of the planet arrive on earth.
Scott Bolton, principal investigator from NASA’s Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said, “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. We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles.”
The new image of Jupiter was taken on July 10 when Juno was about 2.7 million miles away from the planet on the outbound leg of its 53.5-day capture orbit. The color image displays some of the atmospheric features on Jupiter, including three of the four largest moons – Europa, Io and Ganymede) and the famous Great Red Spot.
The JunoCam will continue to take pictures as it makes its first orbit. The first high-resolution images will not be taken until August 27, when Juno makes its next close pass.
The JunoCam is a visible-light, color camera that was specially designed to take pictures of Jupiter’s poles and cloud tops. It is hoped that it will help provide context for the spacecraft’s other instruments. However, it’s main purpose is public engagement. Although the images will be helpful to the science team it is not considered one of the mission’s major instruments. NASA is currently working to get all the images taken by JunoCam on the agency website where they can be accessed by the public.
Juno will circle Jupiter 37 times during its mission, soaring as low over the cloud tops as 2,600 miles. As it makes these flybys the spacecraft will peek beneath the obscuring cloud cover to study the planet’s auroras and try to learn more about its origin, structure and atmosphere.
Video produced by NASA: Time-lapse movie of the Galilian satellites in motion around Jupiter between Jun 12 and June 29
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS