This image illustrates NASA’s Juno mission, which sought to map out Jupiter among a variety of other science goals, on its extended mission: lasting from 2021–2025, where it is now working to find out details such as how Io’s volcanic engine works and whether a global magma ocean exists beneath Io’s rocky surface. If no additional extensions are granted, Juno will be destroyed by the end of September, 2025. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The Juno spacecraft, orbiting and imaging Jupiter since 2016, is still succeeding. Without a further extension, the mission now faces death.
If you were an alien looking at the Solar System, the first planet you’d notice, most likely, wouldn’t be Earth. It’s much easier to spot Jupiter for a variety of reasons, including:
the fact that it emits its own infrared radiation, making it the only planet to emit more light on its own than it reflects from the Sun,
the fact that it has the largest effect, of any planet, on the wobbling orbit of our parent star,
the fact that it’s well-separated from our parent star, making it an easier target for direct imaging than any of the rocky planets,
and the fact that, if viewed from afar at the right perspective, it would block more of the Sun’s light than any other planet during a transit event.
Earth may be of interest to us, since we live on it, but to an external observer, our Solar System, outside of the Sun, is dominated by Jupiter. In fact, outside of the Sun, Jupiter accounts for 250% as much mass as all other bodies in the Solar System combined. Moreover, Jupiter’s major moons…
