New Delhi: The US space agency NASA’s Juno spacecraft is all set to make its fifth fly-by over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops on Monday, March 27 at 4:52 am EDT.
According to NASA, Juno will be about 4,400 kms above the planet’s cloud tops, travelling at a speed of about 57.8 kms per second relative to the gas-giant planet at the time of closest approach (called perijove). And all of Juno’s eight science instruments will be on and collecting data during the fly-by.
Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said, “This will be our fourth science pass -- the fifth close fly-by of Jupiter of the mission -- and we are excited to see what new discoveries Juno will reveal”.
“Every time we get near Jupiter’s cloud tops, we learn new insights that help us understand this amazing giant planet.”
The Juno science team continues to analyze returns from previous fly-bys. Scientists have discovered that Jupiter’s magnetic fields are more complicated than originally thought, and that the belts and zones that give the planet’s cloud tops their distinctive look extend deep into the its interior.
Observations of the energetic particles that create the incandescent auroras suggest a complicated current system involving charged material lofted from volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io.
Juno was launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
