NASA’s solar-powered spacecraft Juno successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit four years ago. The main purpose of the robotic spacecraft is to study and understand the evolution of Jupiter and its formation. Recent research on Jupiter has focused on hotspots in the global atmosphere.
These hotspots on Jupiter were sent by the NASA’s Galileo spacecraft to a natural gas magnate in 1995. At the time, the hotspots in the global atmosphere were said to be thicker and warmer than expected. Experts.
“Giant planets have deep atmospheres without a solid or liquid base like Earth,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “To better understand what is happening deep into one of these worlds, you need to look below the cloud layer. Juno, which recently completed its 29th close-up science pass of Jupiter, does just that. The spacecraft’s observations are shedding light on old mysteries and posing new questions – not only about Jupiter, but about all gas giant worlds.”
However, new information returned by the US Space Agency’s Juno space survey reveals that these hotspots in Jupiter’s atmosphere are much wider and deeper than expected. The findings were released earlier this month as part of a press conference at the American Geophysical Association’s fall meeting on December 11th.
Juno entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 5, 2016, after which he orbited Earth and collected more information about its atmosphere. The new mystery discovered by Juno also helps researchers to better understand the big planets that transcend the solar system.
When the Galileo spacecraft studied Jupiter’s atmosphere 25 years ago, the probe found that it had unexpectedly dried up, indicating that the Earth’s equator was 10 times less than expected. However, a recent study by Juno showed that the atmosphere of a gas planet is rich in water.
