Home News Juno Sends First Image Back While Orbiting Jupiter

Juno Sends First Image Back While Orbiting Jupiter

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this picture of Jupiter on Sunday from a distance of 2.7 million miles. The Great Red Spot storm on Jupiter is visible as are three of Jupiter’s large moons, Io, Europa and Ganymede. Credit NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Malin Space Science Systems

So it did happen.

The Juno spacecraft really did reach Jupiter.

JunoCam, the electronic photographer affixed to the NASA spacecraft that locked into Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, has now met the bar set in the Instagram age. (Pics or it didn’t happen.)

The images transmitted back to Earth after Juno began orbiting Jupiter now confirm the beginning of the space probe’s 20-month mission around the solar system’s largest planet.

Until now, Juno’s nascent path around Jupiter had been tracked by signals it was sending back. But NASA on Tuesday released an image taken by the satellite on Sunday from a distance of 2.7 million miles; it even shows the Great Red Spot, though the famous storm has been shrinking in recent decades and may not be as great as it once was.

[vc_btn title=”More on Juno” style=”outline” color=”primary” size=”lg” align=”left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F07%2F13%2Fscience%2Fjuno-sends-first-image-back-while-orbiting-jupiter.html%3F_r%3D0|title:More%20on%20Juno|target:%20_blank”][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” message_box_color=”turquoise”]By New York Times, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com July 13, 2016 [/vc_message]