Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

The spacecraft is in a polar orbit around the gas giant, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the planet.

This image of Jupiter was taken by Juno on December 16 and then processed by citizen scientist David Marriott. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / David Marriott.

This image of Jupiter was taken by Juno on December 16 and then processed by citizen scientist Kevin Gill. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.

Juno took this image of colorful, turbulent clouds in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere on December 16 at 9:43 a.m. PST (12:43 p.m. EST) from 8,292 miles (13,345 km) above the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of 48.9 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Seán Doran.

But, once every 53 days, Juno’s trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a 2-hr transit — from pole to pole — flying north to south.

During these flybys, the spacecraft is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of the giant planet and studying its auroras to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

This image of Jupiter was taken by Juno on December 16 and then processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstaedt. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt.

At the time of the closest approach, or perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 km) above the planet’s atmosphere.

All of Juno’s science instruments and its JunoCam, a visible-light camera designed to capture remarkable pictures of Jupiter’s poles and cloud tops, were operating during the flyby to collect data.

Source: Sci News