NASA launched the Juno spacecraft with the aim of studying the giant planet Jupiter, which is considered to be the largest and oldest planet in the solar system recently released images new of the planet he took during the sixty-sixth of this great planet.
According to what was reported by the Live Science website, the Juno mission aims to study the Jupiter system with all its parts, including its rings and many moons, in an effort to understand its formation and mean – the growth of this planet, and what this could contribute to it. to reveal more about the evolution of the solar system as a whole.
Juno launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, last August 2011, and arrived at Jupiter in July 2016. It is powered by solar energy to continue conducting detailed investigations..
Jupiter is the most important planet for understanding the entire solar system, said Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the Juno Project at the Southwest Research Institute.
He explained that the Juno mission aims to reveal the secrets of this great planet, explaining that the spacecraft acts as a “messenger” to find out what Jupiter is expressing, which contributes to being giving a scientific explanation of its special properties, and that it is similar to the Rosetta Stone in the sense of decoding its codes and secrets.
Juno took the last images at its sixty-sixth perigee, which is the closest point in its orbit to Jupiter. The images it captured underwent technical processing by scientists to improve their clarity and detail. clarify information.
Since Juno began exploring Jupiter eight years ago, the spacecraft has regularly sent back data and images taken by a camera JunoCam High resolution, so that this data is processed on Earth and transformed into amazing images that allow scientists and those interested to study the finest details of the planet, according to the it was published by Newsweek magazine..
The spacecraft Juno made its last visit, reaching one of Jupiter’s moons, Amalthea, which is characterized by an irregular rocky surface and an oval shape, and is about 104 a mile across.
These images and information add more to the balance of discoveries that Juno was able to make during its mission, as it reveals in a never-before-seen way the natural phenomena that appear at the poles of the planet, such as large hurricanes that revolve around its north and south poles. ..
In addition, “Juno” shed light on a strange structure inside Jupiter, and revealed new details about the Great Red Spot, the largest and longest persistent storm in the Solar System, as the This discovery is considered one of the most prominent in the spaceship. contribute to the understanding of Jupiter’s nature and evolution..
The Juno mission was originally launched to last until October 2017, completing 33 orbits around the planet before it ended by self-destructing in Jupiter’s atmosphere, to prevent contamination of Jupiter’s giant moon by the spacecraft, because moons such as Europa, Ganymede and Callisto have icy surfaces that are thought to be a suitable environment for microbial life, NASA decided to take precautionary measures to prevent pollution of these environments.
However, the success of the mission, and its continuing to make amazing discoveries, prompted NASA to extend the mission first to 2021, and then again to September 2025, which allowed Juno completed 42 additional orbits around Jupiter, including a study of its primary. moons and faint rings, in an attempt to… The first comprehensive investigation of these important elements.
NASA will be available through a page JunoCam The raw images captured by Juno are publicly available. technical releases.
