Jupiter’s Fury Unleashed: NASA’s Juno Uncovers Winds That Pierce the Planet’s Hidden Core
NASA’s Juno Mission Uncovers Jupiter’s Atmospheric Winds
NASA’s Juno mission has made a groundbreaking discovery about Jupiter’s internal structure, revealing that the planet’s atmospheric winds penetrate its interior in a cylindrical pattern, parallel to its rotation axis.
According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the Juno spacecraft’s gravity data has provided deeper insights into Jupiter’s internal structure, a topic of long-standing debate among astronomers and planetary scientists.
The Juno mission has been studying Jupiter’s atmosphere since 2016, using a suite of science instruments to peer beneath the planet’s turbulent clouds and reveal its internal workings. During its 55 missions to date, the spacecraft has captured stunning images of Jupiter’s atmosphere, including a recent image taken during its 54th close flyby of the planet.
The study’s authors used a mathematical technique to simulate the variations in gravity and surface elevation of rocky planets like Earth, which can be applied to Jupiter to accurately map its winds at depth. By using highly accurate Juno data, the authors were able to improve the resolution to four times that of previous models created with NASA’s groundbreaking Jupiter probes Voyager and Galileo.
The discovery has significant implications for our understanding of Jupiter’s internal structure and origin. According to Juno scientist Ryan Parker, “We applied a constraint technique developed for sparse data sets on Earth-like planets to process the Juno data. This is the first time this technique has been applied to an exoplanet.”
The study’s findings match a 20-year-old model that determined that Jupiter’s powerful east-west belts of wind extend inward from the white and red regions at cloud level. However, the measurements also show that rather than extending in every direction like a radiating sphere, the belts are cylindrical inward and oriented along the direction of Jupiter’s rotation axis.
As further knowledge is gained about Jupiter’s interior structure and origin, new gravity model applications can be used to gain additional insights into the atmospheres of other planets. The Juno mission is currently on an extended mission, with plans to complete a series of flybys of Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede and Europa, as well as a close flyby of Io.
According to Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, ”As Juno’s journey progresses, we are achieving science results that are truly defining a new Jupiter and are potentially relevant to all of the large planets in our solar system and beyond.”
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for principal investigator Scott J. Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.