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In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a bold Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity help maneuver. As the spacecraft zipped past our Moon and home world, NASA’s Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument onboard JUICE caught the sharpest-ever picture of Earth’s radiation belts– swaths of charged particles caught in Earth’s magnetosphere.
The center of this infographic reveals the sharpest-ever picture of the cloud of charged particles caught in Earth’s electromagnetic field, while the insets reveal measurements of high-energy ions and electrons identified along the JUICE’s flyby path. Image credit: ESA/ NASA/ Johns Hopkins APL/ Josh Diaz.
“As quickly as we saw the crisp, brand-new images, high fives walked around the space,” stated Dr. Matina Gkioulidou, deputy lead of JENI at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
“It was clear we had actually caught the huge ring of hot plasma surrounding Earth in extraordinary information, an accomplishment that has actually triggered enjoyment for what is to come at Jupiter.”
Unlike standard video cameras that count on light, JENI utilizes unique sensing units to record energetic neutral atoms produced by charged particles engaging with the prolonged climatic hydrogen gas surrounding Earth.
The JENI instrument is the most recent generation of this kind of cam, structure on the success of a comparable instrument on NASA’s Cassini objective that exposed the magnetospheres of Saturn and Jupiter.
On August 19, JENI and its buddy particle instrument Jovian Energetic Electrons (JoEE) took advantage of their short 30-minute encounter with the Moon.
As JUICE zoomed simply 750 km (465 miles) above the lunar surface area, the instruments collected information on the area environment’s interaction with our closest celestial buddy.
It’s an interaction researchers anticipate to see amplified at Jupiter’s moons, as the gas giant’s radiation-rich magnetosphere barrels over them.
On August 20, JUICE tossed into Earth’s magnetosphere, passing some 60,000 km (37,000 miles) above the Pacific Ocean, where the instruments got their very first taste of the severe environment that waits for at Jupiter.
Racing through the magnetotail, JoEE and JENI came across the thick, lower-energy plasma attribute of this area before plunging into the heart of the radiation belts.
There, the instruments determined the million-degree plasma surrounding Earth to examine the tricks of plasma heating that are understood to sustain remarkable phenomena in planetary magnetospheres.
“I could not have actually expected a much better flyby,” stated Dr. Pontus Brandt, primary detective of JoEE and JENI at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
“The richness of the information from our deep-dive through the magnetosphere is impressive. JENI’s picture of the whole system we simply flew through was the cherry on top.”
“It’s an effective mix we will make use of in the Jovian system.”
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This short article was adjusted from an initial release by NASA.
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