PDS logoPlanetary Data System
PDS Information
Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.
Click here to return to the Photojournal Home Page Click here to view a list of Photojournal Image Galleries Photojournal_inner_header
Latest Images  |  Spacecraft & Technology  |  Animations  |  Space Images App  |  Feedback  |  Photojournal Search  

PIA25016: Juno Skims the Cloud Tops of Jupiter
 Target Name:  Jupiter
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Juno
 Spacecraft:  Juno
 Instrument:  JunoCam
 Product Size:  2000 x 757 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Malin Space Science Systems
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA25016.tif (1.226 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA25016.jpg (56.82 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Click here for animation

On April 9, 2022, as NASA's Juno mission completed its 41st close flyby of Jupiter, its JunoCam instrument captured what it would look like to ride along with the spacecraft. Citizen scientist Andrea Luck created this animated sequence using raw JunoCam image data.

At about 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) in diameter, Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. At the point of closest approach on April 9, Juno was just over 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) above Jupiter's colorful cloud tops. At that moment, it was traveling at about 131,000 MPH (210,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.

By comparison, at closest approach Juno was more than 10 times closer to Jupiter than satellites in geosynchronous orbit are to Earth, traveling at a speed about five times faster than the Apollo missions did when they left Earth for the Moon.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.

More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.

Image Credit:
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Andrea Luck © CC BY

Image Addition Date:
2022-05-27