NASA's Juno Spacecraft to Fly Over Jupiter's Great Red Spot July 10

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NASA's Juno Spacecraft to Fly Over Jupiter's Great Red Spot July 10
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 30, 2017

Just days after celebrating its first anniversary in Jupiter orbit, NASA's
Juno spacecraft will fly directly over Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the gas
giant's iconic, 10,000-mile-wide (16,000-kilometer-wide) storm. This will
be humanity's first up-close and personal view of the gigantic feature
-- a storm monitored since 1830 and possibly existing for more than 350
years.

"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 center) will be on Monday, July 10,
at 6:55 p.m. PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). At the time of perijove, Juno will be
about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops. Eleven
minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno will have covered another 24,713 miles
(39,771 kilometers) and will be directly above the coiling crimson cloud
tops of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The spacecraft will pass about 5,600
miles (9,000 kilometers) 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 July 4 at 7:30 p.m. PDT (10:30 p.m. EDT), Juno will have logged exactly
one year in Jupiter orbit. At the time, the spacecraft will have 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 Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its
mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops --
as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). 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.
More information on the Juno mission is available at:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno

http://missionjuno.org

The public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

https://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno

https://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno

News Media Contact
DC Agle / Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011 / 818-354-6278
ag...@jpl.nasa.gov / guy.w....@jpl.nasa.gov

Deb Schmid
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
210-522-2254
dsc...@swri.org

Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1077
dwayne....@nasa.gov / laura.l....@nasa.gov

2017-186