A NASA probe flies over the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, a huge storm. It gives science amazing data about its depth.
Washington DC – NASA’s Juno spacecraft has flown several times over the Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter. This is a hurricane of gigantic proportions about which the probe has gathered more precise information. A NASA research team has now evaluated it – and received amazing data on the depth of the storm, as reported by the US news broadcaster CNN and the media network The Verge. They had only received new knowledge about the largest Jupiter moon Ganymede in July, when water vapor was discovered in the atmosphere there.
The “Great Red Spot”, as the US space agency NASA, based in Washington DC, calls it, is a 16,000-kilometer-long cyclone in the atmosphere of Jupiter – even the earth with its 12,700-kilometer diameter would comfortably fit into it. Because of its size, it is one of the most interesting astronomical phenomena to study for science. But one question was still unanswered: is the cyclone only on the surface of the planet, or does it extend deeper into its atmosphere?
Big red spot on planet Jupiter: Astounding NASA discovery
As reported by CNN and The Verge, the NASA space probe Juno provided crucial data about its storm, which can be seen in photos, during its flights over the planet Jupiter. According to CNN, it should extend between 200 and 500 kilometers into the planet – The Verge reports, with reference to the journal Science, from 300 to 500 kilometers. According to the German Meteorological Service, the weather on earth mainly takes place in the first 10 kilometers of the atmosphere.
“It’s a gigantic storm,” says Yohai Kaspi from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel to The Verge. “If you put this storm on Earth, it would extend all the way to the space station. It’s just a monster, ”says Kaspi. The International Space Station ISS orbits the earth at an altitude of almost 400 kilometers. The German astronaut Matthias Maurer will go on a space mission there on Sunday (October 31, 2021).
NASA probe examines large red spot on planet Jupiter: Lots of new data
But NASA’s new findings about Jupiter do not end there: As several media reports unanimously, the jet storms on Jupiter are even supposed to reach far deeper into the planet than the Great Red Spot. They are the storms that are between the differently colored stripes on Jupiter. Although they are smaller in diameter, they are up to 3000 kilometers deep, as reported by CNN and The Verge, among others.
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“So something happens at [the depth of, note d. Red.] 500 kilometers, which practically attenuates the Great Red Spot, ”said Nasa researcher Marzia Parisi to The Verge network. Work now has to be continued to explain these massive differences from jet storms. Nonetheless, the data from the Juno space probe have brought NASA significantly further: “Before we only had this 2D view, which we could only see from the outside,” Yohai Kaspi told The Verge. “Now we have a complete three-dimensional view.”
Big red spot on Jupiter: NASA probe Juno is to orbit the planet by 2025
NASA launched the Juno spacecraft in 2011. Five years later, it reached the planet Jupiter and entered its orbit. She is expected to continue her work there until 2025.
The Great Red Spot on Jupiter recently astonished science: Its speed is increasing rapidly while its size is decreasing. The cyclone has been raging there for at least two centuries. What exactly causes its red color is not yet known. Instead, a planet similar to Jupiter now gave specialists a look at what happens when the sun dies. (Jan Trieselmann)
