NASA’s Juno mission has gathered new findings after peering below Jupiter’s cloud-covered atmosphere and the exterior of its fiery moon, Io. Not only has the data aimed develop a recent model to better comprehend the fast-moving jet stream that encircles Jupiter’s cyclone-festooned north pole, it’s revealed, in addition, for the first time the subsurface temperature profile of Io, presenting perspective into the moon’s inside’s structure and volcanic activity. Team crew presented the findings during a recent briefing in Vienna on Tuesday, April 29, at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly.
Bigger cyclone than Australia: everything in Jupiter is extremen
“Everything about Jupiter is extreme. The planet is place to gigantic polar cyclones bigger than Australia, fierce jet streams, the most volcanic body in our solar system, the most powerful aurora, and the harshest radiation belts,” explained Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “As Juno’s orbit takes us to other regions of Jupiter’s complex system, we’re getting a closer view at the immensity of energy this gas giant wields.”
Training the intrument on: the combination of two types of data
At the same time Juno’s microwave radiometer (MWR) was elaborated to peer beneath Jupiter’s cloud tops, the team has also trained the instrument on Io, blending its data with Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) data for deeper insights.
“The Juno science team loves to blend very disimilar datasets from very different instruments and observe what we can learn,” said Shannon Brown, a Juno scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “When we took in the MWR data with JIRAM’s infrared imagery, we were amazed by what we saw: evidence of still-warm magma that hasn’t yet solidified below Io’s cooled crust. At every latitude and longitude, there were cooling lava flows.”
The data proposed that about 10% of the moon’s surface has these remnants of slowly cooling lava just under the surface. The result may aid provide inside perspective into how the moon renews its surface so quickly as well as how as well as how heat moves from its deep interior to the surface.
Looking at JIRAM data alone, the team determined, in addtion, that the most energetic eruption in Io’s history (first identified by the infrared imager during Juno’s Dec. 27, 2024, Io flyby) was still spewing lava and ash as recently as March 2. Juno mission scientists believe it remains active today and expect more observations on May 6, at the same time the solar-powered spacecraft flies by the fiery moon at a distance of about 55,300 miles (89,000 kilometers).
Experiments to explore the gas giant’s atmospheric temperature structure
On its 53rd orbit (Feb 18, 2023), Juno started radio occultation experiments to explore the gas giant’s atmospheric temperature structure. All along with this technique, a radio signal is transmitted from Earth to Juno and back, passing through Jupiter’s atmosphere on both legs of the journey. As the planet’s atmospheric layers bend the radio waves, scientists are able to precisely measure the effects of this refraction to derive detailed data about the temperature and density of the atmosphere.
So far, Juno has finished 26 radio occultation soundings. Among the most compelling discoveries: the first-ever temperature measurement of Jupiter’s north polar stratospheric pictures shows the region is about 11 degrees Celsius cooler than its surroundings and is encircled by winds exceeding 100 mph (161 kph).
New findings: cyclone that haunt Jupiter’s north
The investigators recent findings also focus on the cyclones that haunt Jupiter’s north. Many years of data from the JunoCam visible light imager and JIRAM have permit Juno scientists to study the long-term movement of Jupiter’s massive northern polar cyclone and the eight cyclones that encircle it. Unlike hurricanes on Earth, which typically occur in isolation and at lower latitudes, Jupiter’s are confined to the polar region.
By tracking the cyclones’ movements across several orbits, the scientists observed that each storm gradually drifts toward the pole because of a process named “beta drift” (the interaction among the Coriolis force and the cyclone’s circular wind pattern). This is likely to how hurricanes on our planet migrate, but Earthly cyclones break up before reaching the pole because of the lack of warm, moist air needed to fuel them, as well as the weakening of the Coriolis force close to the poles. What’s more, Jupiter’s cyclones cluster together while approaching the pole, and their motion slows as they begin interacting with neighboring cyclones.
