NASA Releases Juno's First Stunning Close-Ups of Jupiter's Giant Storm (theverge.com)

NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back the first photos from its close flyby over Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot. These images offer the closest ever view of the massive storm. The Verge reports: Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for a little over a year on a mission to study the planet's interior, atmosphere, and magnetosphere. Its elliptical orbit around the planet takes the probe close to the surface for a few hours every 53 days. These are called perijove passes -- and on July 10th, Juno completed its seventh. A little after its closest approach, Juno's camera, JunoCam, snapped a few shots of the storm from about 5,000 miles above. Typically, a team of NASA scientists chooses which images a spacecraft collects on its path around a planet. But with Juno, NASA's opened up the process to the public: space fans can weigh in on the photos JunoCam shoots by ranking their favorite points of interest. After the photos are taken, NASA releases the raw images for the public to process. People can crop them, assemble them into collages, and change or enhance the colors. The results are mesmerizing. You can view even more photos here.

Comments

Radiation

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I find it amazing that the probe is able to take the beating of passes that close to the planet, given the significant amount of radiation exposure that entails. Awesome pics!

Re:Radiation

[jfdavis668]

The probe will fail due to radiation exposure, but the orbit was designed to minimize that. The main radiation belts are farther out, and the polar orbit actually avoids the highest concentration zones. An explanation: "The orbits were carefully planned in order to minimize contact with Jupiter's dense radiation belts, which can damage spacecraft electronics and solar panels, by exploiting a gap in the radiation envelope near the planet, passing through a region of minimal radiation. The "Juno Radiation Vault", with 1-centimeter-thick titanium walls, also aids in protecting Juno's electronics. Despite the intense radiation, JunoCam and the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) are expected to endure at least eight orbits, while the Microwave Radiometer (MWR) should endure at least eleven orbits. Juno will receive much lower levels of radiation in its polar orbit than the Galileo orbiter received in its equatorial orbit. Galileo was damaged by radiation during its mission, including an LED diode in its data recording system."

Re:Radiation

[Geoffrey.landis]

The probe will fail due to radiation exposure, but the orbit was designed to minimize that.

Right. Here's a good picture of the perijove, skimming in under the radiation belts: http://www.catherineq.com/wp-c...

Note that each orbit the perijove has precesses slightly (due to perturbations because Jupiter is not perfectly spherical), so after some time the orbit will go through (instead of under) the belts.

Here's an "infographic" with more information: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...

Voyager 1 did it better IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Red spot from Voyager 1 in the 1970's

Power from Radiation

[Geoffrey.landis]

I would have designed the probe to utilize the radiation as a power source, prolonging the mission. I don't understand why the mission planners didn't utilize this obvious power source but I'm sure they had their reasons. I would have done things completely differently.

How would you possibly do that?.

It turns out that, while the radiation is damaging (because each particle has high energy per particle), the actual amount of power represented by the radiation flux is not very high. You can tell that from the fact that Juno doesn't heat up when it crosses the radiation belts.

For what it's worth, here's a paper discussing radiation effects on power systems at Jupiter: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...

Actual Photos

[sexconker]

If you want the actual photos without all of the fake assery all the links show you, click this: https://www.missionjuno.swri.e...