Watch | NASA's Juno captures the whirling world of Jupiter in a beautiful clip
Premium- Juno Spacecraft passed within 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) of the colorful cloud tops on 9 April
Space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been sharing mesmerising views of the outer space and other planets captured on the various missions and telescopes.
Following the trend, the American space agency shared a beautiful short clip of the biggest planet in our solar system Jupiter captured on its mission Juno.
We recommend you watch the video first, before we divulge any further information
The sped-up video has been captured by NASA's Juno mission when it flew just 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) above the gas giant's cloud tops on 9 April.
This was Juno's 41st flyby above the radiation-spewing planet, during which the spacecraft soared at a top speed of 131,000 mph (210,000 km/h) relative to Jupiter. This is more than seven times faster than the speed of the International Space Station (ISS).
The video in the form of an animated sequence, posted by NASA on Instagram, has been created by Citizen Scientist Andrea Luck using the JunoCam picture data in its raw form
"Citizen scientist Andrea Luck created this animated sequence using raw JunoCam image data," NASA officials wrote in a statement on Friday 27 May.
What is Juno mission of NASA?
Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 5 August 2011 UTC, as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on 5 July 2016 UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet.[8] After completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter's atmosphere.
Though Juno was initially targeted to cover only Jupiter, NASA in January 2021 announced that it is extending the mission's mandate to focus a little more closely on the planet's four large moons, especially Ganymede, Europa and Io. Juno spacecraft is expected to run until September 2025.
Visiting Jupiter planet
Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, has 53 recognised moons and another 26 that have yet to be named. Although the rocky moon lo is the solar system's most volcanic globe, Europa's frozen surface conceals a huge ocean of liquid water underneath it.
According to NASA, Juno will have a closer and more detailed look at Europa in September this year when it makes the closest fly-by of the enigmatic moon in decades.
In the 2030s NASA's Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency's JUICE mission (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) plan to visit Jupiter moons directly.
Further, the new James Webb Space Telescope will also examine the giant planet from afar during its forthcoming Cycle 1 set of observations. The telescope's work is set to add to years of data collected under the Hubble Space Telescope's Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program, which seeks to study the gas giants of the solar system at least once every Earth year.