NASA’s Juno probe famously made it to Jupiter on July 4, and in the time since, has given scientists – and the rest of the world – new insights on the solar system.
In the weeks leading up to the spacecraft’s arrival at Jupiter, Juno took amazing footage of the four Galilean moons, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io, circling the massive planet in the first close-up view of celestial body interactions, Space.com reports.
Juno principal researcher Scott Bolton said in a press conference Monday night at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that,
In all of history, we’ve really never been able to see the motion of any heavenly body against another.
Bolton, who is based at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, added that the significance of the video from Juno is huge, as it shows the king of the Solar System and its moons going around it. “To me, it’s very significant, because we’re finally able to see – with real video, with real pictures – this motion, and we’ve only been able to imagine it up until today.”
The Juno video is a nod to famous astronomer Galileo Galilei, one of history’s most advanced thinkers and greatest scientists. The Italian discovered the moons of Jupiter, which were then named Galilean, and he concluded from their movement while observing them for several nights that they orbited Jupiter.
Bolton said Galileo’s deductions were a revelation that changed man’s perspective of space and the universe, as it proved Earth was not the center of everything.
The video is made up of images Juno took with its JunoCam between June 12 and June 19, as the spacecraft drew nearer to the giant planet from10 million to 3 million miles, NASA officials said. Bolton announced that the Juno team plans to take another video as Juno circles back around toward another close approach to Jupiter in August.
The $1.1 billion Juno mission was launched in August 2011. The spacecraft’s observations and data should be able to help scientists better understand how Jupiter was formed, its early activities and by extension, the early days of the Solar System and perhaps even its origins, scientists said.
