Mimas, the smallest and innermost of Saturn’s eight main moons, may be warm enough to harbor a global, liquid water ocean beneath a 24-31-km (15-19-mile) thick ice shell, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini mission.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since 2016. One of its instruments is the ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS), which is primarily used to make ultraviolet images of Jupiter’s auroras. During the first four years of the mission, the UVS instrument has observed 11 transient bright flashes. These flashes look similar to lightning, but are located much higher in the atmosphere than the cloudy regions of Jupiter where lightning is generated. In a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, researchers suggest that these are observations of transient luminous events in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. In particular, they suggest that these events are elves, sprites or sprite halos, three types of transient luminous events that produce spectacular flashes of light very high in the Earth’s atmosphere in response to lightning strikes between clouds or between clouds and the ground.
Multiwavelength observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and Gemini Observatory combined with close-up views from NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveal that lightning strikes and huge storm systems that create them in Jupiter’s atmosphere are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid; the observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations.
In a death-defying maneuver for the spacecraft, NASA’s Juno has completed an unprecedented and unplanned engine burn. The purpose? To save the spacecraft’s “life,” or at least the rest of its mission to Jupiter.
An ancient impact with a planetary embryo changed the core of the gas giant forever.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveals unusual magnetism that suggests a convoluted interior
Infrared data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft point to a new heat source in the southern hemisphere of Io — Jupiter’s third-largest moon — that could indicate a previously undiscovered volcano.
New research shows the closest-ever views of features in Jupiter’s swirling auroras, revealing the complicated footprints left by its moons Io and Ganymede.
Data collected by NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter indicate that the atmospheric winds of the gas-giant planet run deep into its atmosphere and last longer than similar atmospheric processes found here on Earth. The findings will improve understanding of Jupiter’s interior structure, core mass and, eventually, its origin.
NASA’s Juno orbiter successfully made its eleventh flyby of Jupiter on February 7, 2018.
