NASA will hold a briefing Thursday (Oct. 28) with fresh information about how the atmosphere of Jupiter works beneath the giant planet’s colorful clouds.
You can watch the event live at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) on this page, courtesy of NASA Television, as well as on NASA TV, the NASA app, the NASA website and the agency’s social media channels. You’ll see heavy participation from folks involved in the Juno mission, which is investigating Jovian weather processes from up close.”The science team will reveal new findings that provide the first 3D look at how the planet’s roiling atmosphere operates underneath the top layers of clouds, and how these revelations offer insight into the atmospheres of giant planets elsewhere in the universe,” NASA said in a brief statement announcing the briefing.
Participants include:
Lucas Paganini, Juno program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
Marzia Parisi, Juno scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Keren Duer, Juno scientist, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
Leigh Fletcher, Juno participating scientist, University of Leicester, England
Alessandro Mura, Juno co-investigator, Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, RomeJuno arrived at Jupiter in 2016 and is now on an extended mission to gather more detail about the giant planet. The probe passed its 10-year anniversary in space in August and remains in good health during its extended mission, which was approved early in 2021. That said, the intense radiation environment at Jupiter means Juno may not survive to the end of its planned extension in 2025.
Some notable findings of Juno in recent years include finding strange new auroras at Jupiter, giving more information about a generation-long atmospheric “hot spot” mystery, and providing unprecedented detail about the planet’s atmosphere and storms.
Juno’s focus on Jupiter will be valuable given that the next generation of probes in the system are expected to focus largely on the planet’s icy moons: NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will launch no earlier than October 2024, and the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) slated for a launch in 2022. Juno’s work will also assist in numerous exoplanet studies, including that of the James Webb Space Telescope expected to launch late this year.
