NASA’s Jupiter mission Juno shows giant polar storms

NASA’s Juno mission to the gas giant Jupiter has now reached halfway mark and has shown new views of cyclones at the poles.

Juno performs a science gathering dive, scanning from pole to pole as it orbits the planet every 53 days. It is mapping the magnetic and gravity fields and expose Jupiter’s structure and take measurements of the compositions of the planet.

Der Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, is leading the JunoCam project which she described as “our little outreach camera”. She presented some of the remarkable images from the camera –raw images downloaded and processed by members of the public at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington DC.

Professor Hansen said “ When we made our first pass over the poles, we knew we were seeing a territory on Jupiter we have never seen before. What we did not expect was that we would see these orderly polygons of cyclones, huge storms twice the size of Texas. WE thought , wow- that’s spectacular”. Sixteen passes later she added those orderly arrangements of giant storms are still there. “The objective for the Juno mission is to study the interior structure of Jupiter and how that structure expresses itself out on the cloud tops. That’s the kind of connection we’re trying to make. But we’re not there yet.”