Passing Planet Jupiter: Perijove 16 | NASA's Juno Mission

Passing Planet Jupiter: Perijove 16 | NASA's Juno Mission

NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its 53-day, highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. This video features perijove 16, the sixteenth time that Juno has passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016. Each perijove passes near a new part of Jupiter's cloud tops. 

This color-enhanced video has been digitally composed from 21 JunoCam still images, resulting in a 125-fold time-lapse. The video begins with Jupiter rising as Juno approaches from the north. As Juno reaches its closest view—from about 3,500 kilometers over Jupiter's cloud tops—the spacecraft captures the great planet in detail. 

Juno passes light zones and dark belts of clouds that circle the planet, as well as numerous swirling circular storms. Many are larger than hurricanes on Earth. As Juno moves away, a remarkable "dolphin-shaped" cloud is visible. After the perijove, Jupiter recedes into the distance, now displaying the unusual clouds that appear over Jupiter's south. To collect science data, Juno swoops so close to Jupiter that its instruments are exposed to very high levels of radiation.

Starting in April 2024, the spacecraft will carry out a series of occultation experiments that use Juno’s Gravity Science experiment to probe Jupiter’s upper atmospheric makeup. This can provide key information on the planet’s shape and interior structure.

Learn more about NASA's Juno mission:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/

More About the Mission

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.

Video Credit: NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS, Gerald Eichstadt

Duration: 54 seconds

Release Date: Feb. 2, 2019

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