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NASA's Juno Mission |OT| Now in orbit around Jupiter - New images released (9/2)

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GK86

Homeland Security Fail
NASA ‏@NASA

Soaring over Jupiter, @NASAJuno spacecraft completed its closest flyby of the planet today: http://go.nasa.gov/2bWV0sc

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NASA's Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter today. The time of closest approach with the gas-giant world was 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.m. EDT, 13:44 UTC) when Juno passed about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. At the time, Juno was traveling at 130,000 mph (208,000 kilometers per hour) with respect to the planet. This flyby was the closest Juno will get to Jupiter during its prime mission.

"We are getting some intriguing early data returns as we speak," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "It will take days for all the science data collected during the flyby to be downlinked and even more to begin to comprehend what Juno and Jupiter are trying to tell us."
 

dabig2

Member
Man I love me some NASA. This and Pluto in back-to-back summers has been great for planetary science interest. Can't wait to see more detailed pictures and data of the king of all planets in our solar system.

So typically how long does it take Juno to send a bit of information from Jupiter to Earth at (what I assume) light speed? And what's the baud rate of Juno while we're at it?
 

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
So they were practically on the planet? :O

Pretty much. Those pictures are going to be amazing.

Excellent.

That picture btw is around 435,000 miles away from the actual nearest point Juno got to.

I definitely hope Juno took a constant stream of pictures as it got closer to Jupiter.

I think it is a safe bet it took a constant stream of photos. They did it with the first approach.

Man I love me some NASA. This and Pluto in back-to-back summers has been great for planetary science interest. Can't wait to see more detailed pictures and data of the king of all planets in our solar system.

So typically how long does it take Juno to send a bit of information from Jupiter to Earth at (what I assume) light speed? And what's the baud rate of Juno while we're at it?

Seeing the Pluto mission was spectacular and something I will always cherish. Simply because the planet (still a planet to me dammit) was relatively unknown up to that point.

In regards to how long it takes for info to flow:

One way latency is currently about 53 minutes. Data rate according to the DSN currently is about 120 kb/s.
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Would be nice to see clouds from another planet for the first time, as in actual volume and not just a flat smudge as we are used to see them, but I guess it would have to get much closer than it will.
 
Would be nice to see clouds from another planet for the first time, as in actual volume and not just a flat smudge as we are used to see them, but I guess it would have to get much closer than it will.

Juno will, eventually, dive into Jupiter. We just don't know if the cameras will be working by then... or, in case they are, if the craft will be able to transmit the data back to earth from inside the planet.

But everything points to a 'no' anyway... the scientists believe the cameras will only work for ~8 orbits before Jupiter's insane radiation melt them... :(
 

Socreges

Banned
Nothing yet...don't hate the bump

Who/what should I be following to get updates as soon as they're available to the public? @nasa?
 
That is some crazy shit. Good lord, reality is so much more outrageous than fiction. What's the huge swirl at the top of the horizon line on the third pic?
 

Schrade

Member
God dammit... even NASA is taking vertical pictures/video now! ;-P

Such beautiful detail. All pictures of Jupiter we had seen before were always blurred. It is incredible to finally see details of the clouds and their patterns.
 
The Great Spot looks really cold compared to the bands around the planet. I thought it would have been much hotter since there is a lot of activity in there. Well, I assumed there would be a ton going on within. Guess space wins again in making sure I'm am idiot and have no idea what's going on. I can't even figure out Earth and I live here.
It is incredible to finally see details of the clouds and their patterns.
It's very Van Gogh. A thing of beauty, really.
 
I was expecting even closer and higher resolution, are these just the first easy images for them to grab from their low bandwidth signal?
 
Hmm. In this heat scan the great red spot doesn't seem all that hot. The equator line and the north pole, on the other hand...
 

Kelsdesu

Member
Damn. I am more impressed by the sheer blackness of the background than the planet shot.

I wish I could be more excited for this.
 

This shot is interesting and seems to be the closest to the planet atm. It makes me wonder if the camera isn't calibrated to see the cloud layers properly, or if Jupiter's cloud layers are a lot less defined when closer than we originally thought. I'll admit I was envisioning something much similar to Sagan's old art from Cosmos:


But maybe it's much more smoggy and liberal in its definition down there.
 
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