The NASA Juno mission to explore Jupiter has just taken the closest pictures ever of the largest planet in our solar system.
Juno swung within about 2,600 miles of the solar system’s largest planet, the closest any spacecraft has passed, traveling at 130,000 miles per hour
‘We are getting some intriguing early data returns as we speak,’ said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
‘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.’
Juno first swept close to Jupiter when it entered orbit around the planet early last month after a nearly five-year voyage to help study the solar system’s origins.
However, all the probe’s instruments were turned off not to interfere with its positioning as it entered the 53.5-day orbit.
This image obtained from NASA, shows a color view from NASA’s Juno spacecraft made from some of the first images taken by JunoCam after the spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 5th
NASA says it will release images from the flyby late next week.
‘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,’ said Bolton.
Although data from the probe is expected to reach Earth in several days, results from scientists’ analysis will take longer.
‘This is our first opportunity and there are bound to be surprises,’ Steve Levin, Juno project scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said
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