NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Frequently Encounters Giant Swirling Waves at Boundary Between Solar Wind, Jupiter’s Magnetosphere [Study]

The NASA spacecraft orbiting Jupiter has been encountering giant swirling waves. A new study looked into it and revealed the significance of those waves.

NASA's Juno Encounters Giant Swirl Waves

The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA)-led research team has discovered that the solar wind-to-magnetosphere transition point, where NASA's Juno spacecraft orbits Jupiter, is frequently impacted by enormous swirling waves. The waves are a critical mechanism for transporting mass and energy from the planetary space habitats to the solar wind, the Sun's discharge of charged particles.

According to Jake Montgomery, a doctorate student in the combined space physics program of UTSA and SwRI, these occurrences occur when a significant velocity differential arises across the boundary between two regions of space. ScienceDaily reported that at the magnetopause, where a planet's magnetic field and solar wind meet, this could produce a whirling wave or vortex.

Although not visible to the human eye, these Kelvin-Helmholtz waves can be found by instrument measurements of space plasma and magnetic fields. The universe is filled with plasma, a fundamental form of matter composed of charged particles, ions, and electrons.

According to Montgomery, Kelvin-Helmholtz, instabilities are fundamental physical phenomena that happen when solar and stellar winds interact with planetary magnetic fields within and outside our solar system. Juno's observations of these waves during many of its orbits demonstrate the fact that Kelvin-Helmholtz's instabilities actively contribute to the interaction between the solar wind and Jupiter.

The magnetometer on board Juno, as well as the SwRI-built Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE), were used in Montgomery's research published in Geophysical Research Letters.

In-depth observations of phenomena like Kelvin-Helmholtz's instabilities in this region have been made possible by Juno's prolonged time spent close to Jupiter's magnetopause, according to Dr. Robert Ebert, a SwRI staff scientist, and adjunct professor at UTSA. This solar wind interaction is crucial for sustaining activity in that system because it may carry plasma and energy beyond the magnetopause and into Jupiter's magnetosphere.

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More About Juno - NASA's Jupiter Probe

According to Roman legend, the great god Jupiter would disguise his nefarious actions by hiding himself in clouds. Only his wife, the goddess Juno, could glimpse his true self through the shroud.

The Juno spacecraft from NASA has lived up to its moniker. No other spacecraft has been able to see Jupiter's inner workings like Juno has by peering underneath the planet's whirling belts, per The Planetary Society.

Juno investigates the secrets of Jupiter's present to learn more about its past. The probe has discovered new information about Jupiter's magnetic field, severe storm systems, and other topics using various susceptible equipment.

Understanding Jupiter's origins and interior workings helps explain how our Solar System, which is thought to be the oldest in the universe, came into being.

Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011, on an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It traveled about 2 billion miles (about 3 billion kilometers) before reaching Jupiter on July 4, 2016.