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This illustration depicts NASA's Juno spacecraft soaring
over Jupiter’s south pole.
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for
the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in
San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin
Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in
Pasadena.
NASA's Juno mission completed a close flyby of Jupiter and its Great Red
Spot on July 10, during its sixth science orbit.
All of Juno's science instruments and the spacecraft's JunoCam were
operating during the flyby, collecting data that are now being returned to
Earth. Juno's next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on Sept. 1.
Raw images from the spacecraft’s latest flyby will be posted in coming
days.
"For generations people from
all over the world and all walks of life have marveled over the Great Red Spot," said
Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research
Institute in San Antonio. "Now we are finally going to see what this
storm looks like up close and personal."
The Great Red Spot is a
10,000-mile-wide (16,000-kilometer-wide) storm that has been monitored since
1830 and has possibly existed for more than 350 years. In modern times, the
Great Red Spot has appeared to be shrinking.
Juno reached perijove (the point
at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter's center) on July 10 at 6:55 p.m.
PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500
kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops. Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later,
Juno had covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers), and was passing directly
above the coiling crimson cloud tops of the Great Red Spot. The spacecraft passed
about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the clouds of this iconic feature.
On July 4 at 7:30 p.m. PDT (10:30 p.m. EDT), Juno logged exactly
one year in Jupiter orbit, marking 71 million miles (114.5 million kilometers) of
travel around the giant planet.
Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011,
from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low
over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400
kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud
cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's
origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Early science results from NASA's
Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent
world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora,
and huge polar cyclones.
JPL manages the Juno mission for
the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute. The
Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission
Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL
is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.