Orbiting Jupiter

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Juice’s entire arsenal of instrumentation will also tell us more about the Great Red Spot. Although it has been raging for hundreds of years, we can see from Earth that this huge storm is shrinking and starting to interact with other storms. To really understand this new phase of existence, Juice will look at how the storm changes over many years. Inside the Great Red Spot, gases are ‘cooked’ by ultraviolet rays from the Sun to form potentially unique molecules; Juice will use spectroscopy (looking at the wavelengths of light being absorbed and emitted by molecules inside the storm) to uncover the strange chemical processes taking place and the origins of those striking red colours.

Juno completed a five-year cruise to Jupiter, arriving on July 5, 2016. [7] The spacecraft traveled a total distance of roughly 2.8 × 10 These studies may provide answers to an age-old question known as the ‘energy crisis’ that asks why Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is much hotter than we can account for due to solar energy alone. Astronomers believe the auroral energy could somehow be transmitted from the poles to the equator, but the planet appears to spin too fast for this to be feasible. Juice will use three instruments to look at how Jupiter’s auroras and winds interact to understand how energy flows through Jupiter’s atmosphere. Another curious feature of Jupiter’s atmosphere is the auroras that light up the planet’s poles. Just like the auroras on Earth, these are caused by charged particles that are channelled along Jupiter’s magnetic field lines and collide with other molecules in the planet’s atmosphere. They look beautiful, but are a visible sign of chemical changes in Jupiter’s polar atmosphere. Juice will study the aurora to understand how the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere interact over time.

How can you see Jupiter's rings?

This discussion of auroras, charged particles and magnetic fields takes us on to Jupiter’s magnificent magnetic environment. Magnetic environment Juno is the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after the nuclear powered Galileo orbiter, which orbited from 1995 to 2003. [8] Unlike all earlier spacecraft sent to the outer planets, [8] Juno is powered by solar panels, commonly used by satellites orbiting Earth and working in the inner Solar System, whereas radioisotope thermoelectric generators are commonly used for missions to the outer Solar System and beyond. For Juno, however, the three largest solar panel wings ever deployed on a planetary probe (at the time of launching) play an integral role in stabilizing the spacecraft as well as generating power. [10] Naming [ edit ] As the name suggests, a strong focus of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission is to explore the subsurface oceans of Jupiter’s icy moons. But an investigation into how life-friendly worlds form around gas giants would be incomplete without also studying Jupiter itself, its turbulent atmosphere, its enormous magnetic field, and the dusty rings and myriad smaller moons that also orbit the planet. Since arriving at Jupiter in July 2016, NASA’s Juno mission has been orbiting the gas giant every 53 days, capturing stunning high-resolution snapshots as it goes. Juice will complement Juno by taking a more global view, continuously watching Jupiter as a whole system to monitor how its ever-changing atmosphere and auroras evolve over time, from minutes to days to years. Exploring how Jupiter changes with time can reveal the processes that shape the physics and chemistry of this archetypal atmosphere, and could one day enable us to generate robust forecasts of the Jovian weather and climate.

Juice’s main goal is to characterise Jupiter’s icy moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats. But by observing Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetosphere, and system of moons and rings, the mission will also reveal how different aspects of the planet’s environment affect one another. In this way, Juice will improve our knowledge of Jupiter as a unique planet and as a whole system. How does this all come together? Artist impression of 25 ‘hot Jupiters’ – gas giant exoplanets that look physically similar to Jupiter but orbit closer to their host stars Jupiter’s ever-changing atmosphere has been a source of curiosity since the Solar System’s most famous storm – the churning Great Red Spot – was first glimpsed in the 17thcentury. Juice will use its unique instruments to answer questions such as: What is the weather and climate like on Jupiter? How does an atmosphere work when there is no solid surface? What could be making Jupiter’s upper atmosphere so unexpectedly hot? As Jupiter rotates, a doughnut-shaped region of charged particles has built up around the planet, in what is one of the most intense radiation environments in the Solar System. Jupiter’s fast rotation creates a powerful natural particle accelerator that causes the particles to release radio waves. Juice will observe and characterise the charged particles and their radio emission using a suite of sensors and probes, both from inside the doughnut and from a distance, to capture how Jupiter works as an overall space plasma system. What’s more, measurements of the accelerated charged particles will improve our understanding of fundamental physics.

As the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, Io will be another target for Juice. On this fiery world, volcanoes soar up to around 18 km in height, and eruptions can last years. These eruptions blast out charged particles that are carried around Jupiter and towards Ganymede and Europa. Juice will monitor Io’s volcanic activity and investigate what its surface is made of. Another interesting property of Io is its relationship with the orbits of Ganymede and Europa: for every orbit that Ganymede makes of Jupiter, Europa completes precisely two, and Io precisely four. It is likely that the three moons formed somewhere else around Jupiter and were captured into these stable orbits. Juice will help us understand how and why the moons’ orbits have changed over time.