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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
JunoCam, the visible light imager aboard NASA’s Juno, captured this enhanced-color view of Ju-piter’s northern high latitudes from an altitude of about 36,000 miles (58,000 kilometers) above the giant planet’s cloud tops during the spacecraft’s 69th flyby on Jan. 28, 2025. Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Jackie Branc (CC BY) New data from the agency’s Jovian orbiter sheds light on the fierce winds and cyclones of the gas giant’s northern reaches and volcanic action on its fiery moon.
NASA’s Juno mission has gathered new findings after peering below Jupiter’s cloud-covered atmosphere and the surface of its fiery moon, Io. Not only has the data helped develop a new model to better understand the fast-moving jet stream that encircles Jupiter’s cyclone-festooned north pole, it’s also revealed for the first time the subsurface temperature profile of Io, providing insights into the moon’s inner structure and volcanic activity.
Team members presented the findings during a news briefing in Vienna on Tuesday, April 29, at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly.
“Everything about Jupiter is extreme. The planet is home to gigantic polar cyclones bigger than Australia, fierce jet streams, the most volcanic body in our solar system, the most powerful aurora, and the harshest radiation belts,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “As Juno’s orbit takes us to new regions of Jupiter’s complex system, we’re getting a closer look at the immensity of energy this gas giant wields.”
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Made with data from the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno, this animation shows the south polar region of Jupiter’s moon Io during a Dec. 27, 2024, flyby. The bright spots are locations with higher temperatures caused by volcanic activity; the gray areas resulted when Io left the field of view.NASA/JPL/SwRI/ASI – JIRAM Team (A.M.) Lunar Radiator
While Juno’s microwave radiometer (MWR) was designed to peer beneath Jupiter’s cloud tops, the team has also trained the instrument on Io, combining its data with Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) data for deeper insights.
“The Juno science team loves to combine very different datasets from very different instruments and see what we can learn,” said Shannon Brown, a Juno scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “When we incorporated the MWR data with JIRAM’s infrared imagery, we were surprised by what we saw: evidence of still-warm magma that hasn’t yet solidified below Io’s cooled crust. At every latitude and longitude, there were cooling lava flows.”
The data suggests that about 10% of the moon’s surface has these remnants of slowly cooling lava just below the surface. The result may help provide insight into how the moon renews its surface so quickly as well as how as well as how heat moves from its deep interior to the surface.
“Io’s volcanos, lava fields, and subterranean lava flows act like a car radiator,” said Brown, “efficiently moving heat from the interior to the surface, cooling itself down in the vacuum of space.”
Looking at JIRAM data alone, the team also determined that the most energetic eruption in Io’s history (first identified by the infrared imager during Juno’s Dec. 27, 2024, Io flyby) was still spewing lava and ash as recently as March 2. Juno mission scientists believe it remains active today and expect more observations on May 6, when the solar-powered spacecraft flies by the fiery moon at a distance of about 55,300 miles (89,000 kilometers).
This composite image, derived from data collected in 2017 by the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno, shows the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole and the eight cy-clones that encircle it. Data from the mission indicates these storms are enduring fea-tures.NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM Colder Climes
On its 53rd orbit (Feb 18, 2023), Juno began radio occultation experiments to explore the gas giant’s atmospheric temperature structure. With this technique, a radio signal is transmitted from Earth to Juno and back, passing through Jupiter’s atmosphere on both legs of the journey. As the planet’s atmospheric layers bend the radio waves, scientists can precisely measure the effects of this refraction to derive detailed information about the temperature and density of the atmosphere.
So far, Juno has completed 26 radio occultation soundings. Among the most compelling discoveries: the first-ever temperature measurement of Jupiter’s north polar stratospheric cap reveals the region is about 11 degrees Celsius cooler than its surroundings and is encircled by winds exceeding 100 mph (161 kph).
Polar Cyclones
The team’s recent findings also focus on the cyclones that haunt Jupiter’s north. Years of data from the JunoCam visible light imager and JIRAM have allowed Juno scientists to observe the long-term movement of Jupiter’s massive northern polar cyclone and the eight cyclones that encircle it. Unlike hurricanes on Earth, which typically occur in isolation and at lower latitudes, Jupiter’s are confined to the polar region.
By tracking the cyclones’ movements across multiple orbits, the scientists observed that each storm gradually drifts toward the pole due to a process called “beta drift” (the interaction between the Coriolis force and the cyclone’s circular wind pattern). This is similar to how hurricanes on our planet migrate, but Earthly cyclones break up before reaching the pole due to the lack of warm, moist air needed to fuel them, as well as the weakening of the Coriolis force near the poles. What’s more, Jupiter’s cyclones cluster together while approaching the pole, and their motion slows as they begin interacting with neighboring cyclones.
“These competing forces result in the cyclones ‘bouncing’ off one another in a manner reminiscent of springs in a mechanical system,” said Yohai Kaspi, a Juno co-investigator from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. “This interaction not only stabilizes the entire configuration, but also causes the cyclones to oscillate around their central positions, as they slowly drift westward, clockwise, around the pole.”
The new atmospheric model helps explain the motion of cyclones not only on Jupiter, but potentially on other planets, including Earth.
“One of the great things about Juno is its orbit is ever-changing, which means we get a new vantage point each time as we perform a science flyby,” said Bolton. “In the extended mission, that means we’re continuing to go where no spacecraft has gone before, including spending more time in the strongest planetary radiation belts in the solar system. It’s a little scary, but we’ve built Juno like a tank and are learning more about this intense environment each time we go through it.”
More About Juno
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Italian Space Agency funded the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft. Various other institutions around the U.S. provided several of the other scientific instruments on Juno.
More information about Juno is at: https://www.nasa.gov/juno
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DC Agle
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NASA Headquarters, Washington
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Deb Schmid
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
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dschmid@swri.org
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Last Updated Apr 29, 2025 Related Terms
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 5 min read
Sols 4518-4519: Thumbs up from Mars
This image was taken by Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4516. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
Earth planning date: Monday, 21st April 2025
It is Easter Monday, a bank holiday here in the United Kingdom. I am Science Operations Working Group Chair today, a role that is mainly focused on coordinating all the different planning activities on a given day, and ensuring all the numbers are communicated to everyone. And with that I mean making sure that everyone knows how much power we have and other housekeeping details. It’s a fun role, but on the more technical side of the mission, which means I don’t get to look at the rocks in the workspace as closely as my colleagues who are planning the activities of the instruments directly investigating the rocks. It’s a lot of fun to see how planning day after planning day things come together. But why am I doing this on a bank holiday, when I could well be on my sofa? I just was reminded in the hours before planning how much fun it actually is to spend a little more time looking at all the images – and not the usual hectic rush coming out of an almost complete work day (we start at 8 am PDT, which is 4 pm here in the UK!). So, I enjoyed the views of Mars, and I think Mars gave me a thumbs up for it, or better to say a little pointy ‘rock up’ in the middle of a sandy area, as you can see in the image above!
I am sure you noticed that our team has a lot to celebrate! Less than a month after the publication about alkanes made headlines in many news outlets, we have another big discovery from our rover, now 4518 sols on Mars: in three drill holes, the rover instruments detected the mineral siderite, a carbonate. That allowed a group of scientists from our team to piece together the carbon cycle of Mars. If you want to know more, the full story is here. I am looking forward to our next big discovery. Who knows that that is? Well, it would not be exploration, if we knew!
But today’s workspace looks intriguing with all its little laminae (the very fine layers) and its weathering patterns that look like a layered cake that little fingers have picked the icing off! (Maybe I had too many treats of the season this weekend? That’s for you to decide!) But then Mars did what it did so many times lately: we did not pass our slip risk assessment and therefore had to keep the arm stowed. I think there is a direct link between geologists getting exciting about all the many rocks, and a wheel ending up on one of them, making it unsafe to unstow the arm. There was a collective sigh of disappointment – and then we moved on to what we actually can do.
And that is a lot of imaging. As exciting as getting an APXS measurement and MAHLI images would be, Mastcam images, ChemCam chemistry and RMI images are exciting, too. The plan starts with three Mastcam activities to document the small troughs that form around some of the rocks. Those amount to 15 frames already, then we have a ten-frame mosaic on a target called “West Fork,” which is looking at rocks in the middle ground of the scenery and display interesting layering. Finally, a 84 frame mosaic will image Texoli, one of the large buttes in our neighbourhood, in all its beauty. It shows a series of interesting layers and structures, including some that might be akin to what we expect the boxwork structures to look like. Now, did you keep count? Yes, that’s 109 frames from Mastcam – and add the one for the documentation of the LIBS target, too, and Mastcam takes exactly 110 frames!
ChemCam is busy with a target called “Lake Poway,” which represents the bedrock around us. Also in the ChemCam activities is a long distance RMI upwards Mt Sharp to the Yardang unit. After the drive – more of that later – ChemCam as an automated observation, we call it AEGIS, where ChemCam uses a clever algorithm to pick its own target.
The drive will be very special today. As you may have seen, we are imaging our wheels in regular intervals to make sure that we are keeping track of the wear and tear that over 34 km of offroad driving on Mars have caused. For that, we need a very flat area and our rover drivers did locate one due West of the current rover positions. So, that’s where we will drive first, do the full MAHLI wheel imaging and then return to the originally planned path. That’s where we’ll do a MARDI image, post drive imaging to prepare the planning for the next sols, and the above mentioned AEGIS.
In addition to all the geologic investigations, there is continuous environmental monitoring ongoing. Curiosity will look at opacity and dust devils, and REMS will switch on regularly to measure wind speeds, humidity, temperature, ultraviolet radiation and pressure throughout the plan. Let’s not forget DAN, which monitors water and chlorine in the subsurface as we are driving along. It’s so easy to forget the ones that sit quietly in the back – but in this case, they have important data to contribute!
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
ECF 2024 Quadchart Boles.pdf
Jessica Boles
University of California, Berkeley
This project will develop piezoelectric-based power conversion for small power systems on the lunar surface. These piezoelectric systems can potentially offer high power density to significantly reduce size, weight, and cost. They can also offer high efficiency as well as resistance to the extreme lunar environment with its expected prolonged exposure to extreme cold and radiation. The effort will build and test prototype piezoelectric DC-to-DC power converters and DC-to-DC power supplies.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover sees its tracks receding into the distance at a site nicknamed “Ubajara” on April 30, 2023. This site is where Curiosity made the discovery of siderite, a mineral that may help explain the fate of the planet’s thicker ancient atmosphere.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover could provide an answer to the mystery of what happened to the planet’s ancient atmosphere and how Mars has evolved over time.
Researchers have long believed that Mars once had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and liquid water on the planet’s surface. That carbon dioxide and water should have reacted with Martian rocks to create carbonate minerals. Until now, though, rover missions and near-infrared spectroscopy analysis from Mars-orbiting satellites haven’t found the amounts of carbonate on the planet’s surface predicted by this theory.
Reported in an April paper in Science, data from three of Curiosity’s drill sites revealed the presence of siderite, an iron carbonate mineral, within the sulfate-rich rocky layers of Mount Sharp in Mars’ Gale Crater.
“The discovery of abundant siderite in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars,” said Benjamin Tutolo, associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, and lead author of the paper.
To study the Red Planet’s chemical and mineral makeup, Curiosity drills three to four centimeters down into the subsurface, then drops the powdered rock samples into its CheMin instrument. The instrument, led by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, uses X-ray diffraction to analyze rocks and soil. CheMin’s data was processed and analyzed by scientists at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Drilling through the layered Martian surface is like going through a history book,” said Thomas Bristow, research scientist at NASA Ames and coauthor of the paper. “Just a few centimeters down gives us a good idea of the minerals that formed at or close to the surface around 3.5 billion years ago.”
The discovery of this carbonate mineral in rocks beneath the surface suggests that carbonate may be masked by other minerals in near-infrared satellite analysis. If other sulfate-rich layers across Mars also contain carbonates, the amount of stored carbon dioxide would be a fraction of that needed in the ancient atmosphere to create conditions warm enough to support liquid water. The rest could be hidden in other deposits or have been lost to space over time.
In the future, missions or analyses of other sulfate-rich areas on Mars could confirm these findings and help us better understand the planet’s early history and how it transformed as its atmosphere was lost.
Curiosity, part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio, was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on Curiosity, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity
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