During its 41st close flyby of Jupiter on April 2022, the Juno spacecraft skims the cloud tops of Jupiter. At the point of closest approach, the spacecraft was just over miles (3,300 kilometers) above Jupiter‘s colorful cloud tops.
The JunoCam instrument on the space probe captured what it would look like to ride along with the spacecraft.
Using those raw images, citizen scientist Andrea Luck created an animation sequence that may amaze all space lovers. At that moment, it was traveling at about 131,000 MPH (210,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by AndreaLuck © CC BYÂÂ
NASA said in a statement, “At that moment, Juno was traveling at about 131,000 MPH (210,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet. By comparison, at closest approach, Juno was more than 10 times closer to Jupiter than satellites in geosynchronous orbit are to Earth, traveling at speed about five times faster than the Apollo missions did when they left Earth for the Moon.”