NASA's spacecraft to fly over Jupiter's great red spot

"Jupiter's mysterious Great Red Spot is probably the best-known feature of Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, Principal Investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "This monumental storm has raged on the solar system's biggest planet for centuries. Now, Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special."

The data collection of the Great Red Spot is part of Juno's sixth science flyby over Jupiter's mysterious cloud tops. Perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter's centre) will be on 10th July, at 6:55pm PDT (9:55pm EDT). At the time of perijove, Juno will be about 2,200m (3,500km) above the planet's cloud tops. Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno will have covered another 24,713m (39,771km) and will be directly above the coiling crimson cloud tops of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The spacecraft will pass about 5,600m (9,000km) above the Giant Red Spot clouds. All eight of the spacecraft's instruments as well as its imager, JunoCam, will be on during the flyby.

On 4th July, Juno logged exactly one year in Jupiter orbit. At the time, the spacecraft chalked up about 71 million miles (114.5 million kilometers) in orbit around the giant planet.

"The success of science collection at Jupiter is a testament to the dedication, creativity and technical abilities of the NASA-Juno team," said Rick Nybakken, Project Manager for Juno from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Each new orbit brings us closer to the heart of Jupiter's radiation belt, but so far the spacecraft has weathered the storm of electrons surrounding Jupiter better than we could have ever imagined."

Juno launched on 5th August 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops - as close as about 2,100m (3,400km). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Early science results from NASA's Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones.  

JPL manages the Juno mission for the Principal Investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

Click here for more information on the Juno mission.