CuriosityStream’s ‘Destination: Jupiter’ Offers Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse into NASA’s Juno Mission

In order to achieve such tremendous speed, the Juno spacecraft was initially launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and navigated toward the sun in order to utilize a sort of “gravitational slingshot” where the spacecraft locked into Earth’s orbit as our planet looped around the sun, releasing from Earth’s orbit at the precise moment and gathering speed at a rate of almost four kilometers per second.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft is now nearing the giant planet Jupiter – largest planet in our solar system – preparing to enter orbit around it on July 4, 2016.

In one shot shared by NASA, taken on June 21, even though Juno was still 6.8 million miles away the quartet of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were all visible. “At this wavelength, Jupiter’s clouds appear in silhouette against the deep internal glows of the planet”. To help map the planet for that rendezvous, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has used an instrument on its Very Large Telescope (VLT) to create a stunning image of the solar system’s largest planet.

In this image provided by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, the planet Jupiter is pictured. It’s one of the last we’ll see until after the spacecraft’s arrival.

The Juno spacecraft launched August 5, 2011 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“The solar system is not this passive place, everybody settles exactly where they’ve been for a long time, but rather it’s a dynamic place where serious rearrangement has happened over time”, says astronomy contributor and director of UWM’s Manfred Olson Planetarium, Jean Creighton.

The JunoCam, as NASA is calling it, has been created to acquire high resolution views of features in Jupiter’s atmosphere while the satellite is in orbit.

On 28th June, the pressurization of its propulsion system occurs.

Previous missions that imaged the gas planet on approach saw the system from considerably lower latitudes, closer to its equator.

Juno’s won’t take any more images until two days after its arrival when the spacecraft’s optical camera is turned back on. Juno will observe the unexplored polar regions and its instruments will also probe deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere than any spacecraft has.

“We skim across the cloud tops”, says Bolton.

The robotic explorer is due to reach the planet on 4 July after a five-year, 1.4 billion-mile journey from Earth. “In the future we will see Jupiter’s polar auroras from a new perspective”. Bluer areas are cold and cloud-free; orangey areas are warm and cloudy; more colourless bright regions are warm and cloud-free; dark regions are cold and cloudy (such as the Great Red Spot and the prominent ovals).

“Together with the new results from Juno, this dataset will allow researchers to characterise Jupiter’s global thermal structure, cloud cover and distribution of gaseous species”, Orton said.

“Juno’s arrival promises to be a spectacular event, offering a first-ever look into the secrets of this massive planet”, Elizabeth Hendricks North, president and CEO of CuriosityStream, said in a statement.

“The combined efforts of an worldwide team of amateur and professional astronomers have provided us with an incredibly rich dataset over the past eight months”, said Dr Orton. They gave us a better view of the equatorial area, but Juno will expand our knowledge of much different parts of Jupiter.