NASA's Juno probe just completed its first Jupiter flyby on Aug. 27, Saturday. This is, by far, the closest flyby that the Juno spacecraft has made of the planet till date.
The recent flyby was the first one of the 36 planned orbital flybys that will be made during the course of the mission, according to Space.com. The Juno spacecraft entered the orbit of the giant red planet on July 4, 2015, after completing a five-year long journey.
The flyby will allow researchers and astronomers to see over the top of Jupiter's clouds, from a distance of just 2,600 miles above the planet's surface. The flyby, which was conducted at a speed of speed of 130,000 mph, had all of the instruments aboard the spacecraft working for the first time in space.
Even though every single instrument aboard the probe for working, it will still take some time before the data and the final images are finally made public. The researchers are currently retrieving the data from the flyby and astronomy enthusiasts may have to wait a little bit more to witness the results of the amazing flyby.
According to Scott Bolton, the principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, the research team has already started to retrieve some interesting early data from the probe. It will, however, take a number of days before the team is able to download all the data from the probe and a lot more time to draw an inference from the data to figure out what Juno and Jupiter have to tell to the team on Earth.
The data will consist of hundreds of high-resolution photographs of the planet, taken from JunoCam. It is a visible light camera aboard Juno spacecraft. NASA officials believe that the photographs taken from this camera will provide some of the most detailed and closest view of the giant gaseous planet, and is expected to be made available to the public in the next couple of weeks.
In fact, the data retrieved from the probe is expected to give a whole new point of view to Jupiter, something that no one in the past has been able to perform.
