Jupiter's Great Red Spot: What We've Learned So Far [4K] | Zenith | Spark

jupiter is our solar system's largest planet it's more than twice the mass of all the other planets combined its swirling atmosphere moves in bands at different latitudes and its great red spot is thought to be a perpetual storm recently images from a new probe that has flown above jupiter's poles reveal a completely different planet [Music] [Music] the ancient romans knew jupiter as the celestial representation of the king of the gods in 1610 galileo using his newly improved telescope saw jupiter's moons and could see they orbited the planet evidence that not everything revolved around the earth as the church had declared though better telescopes improved our view of jupiter it was not until 1964 that gary flandro a graduate student working part-time at nasa's jpl understood there was a way to get a clearer look at jupiter by plotting the positions of the outer planets he realized that a rare alignment would enable a spacecraft launched in 1977 to visit jupiter saturn uranus and neptune [Music] nasa jumped the opportunity and began work on twin craft for what was then known as the planetary grand tour to limit any surprises two basic spacecraft known as pioneer 10 and 11 were quickly built they would go ahead of the grand tour missions to send back information about the environment pioneer 10 was launched toward jupiter in march 1972 it was the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt that lay between mars and jupiter and because it was the first probe on a trajectory that would take it out of the solar system it carried a plaque identifying its origin by december 1973 pioneer 10 was sending back pictures of jupiter clearer than anything that had been seen before approaching jupiter it encountered levels of ion radiation 10 000 times more intense than the radiation belts surrounding earth as the probe skimmed past the giant planet it gained speed leaving earth pioneer 10 was moving at 51 000 kilometers per hour departing jupiter it had more than doubled its speed this gravitational slingshot effect made the grand tour possible the grand tour craft recently renamed voyager 1 and 2 were due to be transferred to cape canaveral for launch integration when news of jupiter's extreme radiation environment came through the electron radiation at jupiter had generated false commands within pioneer 10. with the far more sophisticated voyagers this presented problems local supermarkets were stripped of their stocks of kitchen grade aluminium foil which was then used to shield critical cables without this last minute alteration electrical pressures of up to 40 000 volts would have been induced in the voyager's subsystems as the craft passed jupiter voyager 2 was launched in august 1977. its trajectory meant that he could visit jupiter saturn uranus and neptune voyager 1 left 16 days later its different faster trajectory only allowed flybys of jupiter and saturn and various large moons [Music] at the time the voyager spacecraft were the most sophisticated probes to be launched because they were to operate at huge distances from the sun solar panels could not be used as a power source they were equipped with radioisotope thermoelectric generators which used the heat from the decay of plutonium-238 to generate power as voyager 1 approached jupiter in january 1979 it began sending image sequences that showed a complex and dynamic planet the planet's giant red spot was revealed as a vast rotating storm in 1665 giovanni cassini described a permanent spot on jupiter which was regularly observed into the 1700s it was not until the late 1800s that jupiter's spot was described as red and it's uncertain whether the historic observations of jupiter's spot refer to the same feature or a phenomenon that regularly manifests in jupiter's atmosphere voyager 1 made its closest approach early in march 1979. as the probe neared jupiter the activity at nasa's jet propulsion laboratory became intense this was the nature of the voyager's flyby missions there were long quiet cruise phases between the planets followed by brief periods when the flow of information from the craft overwhelmed researchers [Music] one of the biggest contributions made by the voyagers was the transformation in our understanding of the galilean moons previously just dots of light jupiter's four largest moons were each distinct and completely different [Music] the first surprise was the inner moon io it's a sulfurous yellow in appearance and one particular long duration exposure revealed an odd plume rather than being a cold dead world the gravitational squeezing io receives from its giant neighbor heats the moon's interior the plume was a volcanic eruption ejecting material hundreds of kilometers above the surface in july 1979 three months after voyager 1 had moved beyond jupiter voyager 2 made its closest approach it was able to examine different moons more closely than its twin europa was the next surprise it is highly reflective and has the smoothest surface of any body in the solar system further observation revealed pressure ridges reminiscent of polar ice flows on earth europa is a frozen world with a vast ocean beneath a thick crust of ice like io it is heated from within by tidal flexing as voyager 2 continued towards saturn planetary researchers were left with large amounts of raw data about jupiter still to be processed the voyager missions left us with a basic view of the jovian system but they had raised more questions than they were able to answer it would be more than 10 years before jupiter received another visitor from earth mission and liftoff of discovery and the ulysses spacecraft bound for the polar in october 1990 the space shuttle discovery lifted the european ulysses spacecraft to low earth orbit from there it was boosted on a mission to observe the sun but first it would pass jupiter all the planets orbit the sun in the same direction in roughly the same plane this is called the ecliptic and it developed from the spinning disk of dust and gas that formed our solar system the designers of the ulysses spacecraft wanted to see the sun from an orbit above its poles jupiter's extreme gravitation was used to bend the probe's flight path out of the ecliptic so it could make north-south orbits of the sun ulysses was not the only probe to take advantage of jupiter's gravity both the cassini probe to saturn launched in 1997 and the new horizons probe to pluto launched in 2006 were able to reduce their flight times by years with jupiter flybys these probes were able to make meaningful observations while passing the giant planet [Music] [Laughter] in the clean rooms of the jet propulsion laboratory a new probe was taking shape galileo would be the first spacecraft to go into orbit around jupiter its 4.8 meter antenna was folded like an umbrella only to be deployed when safely on the way to jupiter originally scheduled to launch in 1986 it sat in storage for years after the space shuttle challenger exploded [Music] it launched aboard space shuttle atlantis in october 1989. four three two one we have ignition and liftoff of atlantis and the galileo spacecraft bound for jupiter new rules governing shuttle launches meant a change in the booster to push galileo out of earth orbit the less powerful solid fuel upper stage now stipulated sent galileo toward venus for a gravity assist [Music] the new flight path meant galileo was traveling to a hotter part of the solar system it was decided to keep the heat-sensitive antenna furled until after the spacecraft looped backed past earth galileo made two close passes of earth each time gaining more speed its first pass was in december 1990 more than a year after its launch a further year on when it passed earth again the high gain antenna was only partially open after months of trying different techniques to deploy the antenna mission engineers concluded that long periods in storage had caused lubricant at the tips of the antenna's ribs to dissipate researchers would rely on galileo's smaller antenna with data delivered at slower rates during the cruise to jupiter galileo encountered several asteroids this is ida the first asteroid we've learned of with its own moon daktil in july 1995 while it was still six months away from its closest encounter with jupiter galileo ejected a small probe designed to enter the atmosphere and sample its chemical composition the probe lasted for an hour in jupiter's atmosphere the data was relayed to galileo and recorded for subsequent transmission back to earth its analysis revealed hardly any water vapor which was unexpected and other elements particularly helium were detected at far lower levels than predicted the probe experienced areas of extreme heat and cold suggesting heat is being released from the planet's interior slightly more than an hour after transmission from the probe ceased galileo began its orbit insertion burn its engine had to operate for 49 minutes to put it into a highly elliptical equatorial orbit but this orbit would be altered with another burn at its high point mission designers were acutely aware of the high radiation environment and the second burn would lift galileo above the extreme radiation at its closest approach galileo's initial orbit eventually delivered a close approach to ganymede jupiter's largest moon during this orbit engineers were trying to understand damage to the spacecraft's vital tape recorder without its high gain antenna the recorder was essential for slow replay of data recorded during the brief close encounters it had been stuck in rewind for 15 hours and tape had been degraded light emitting diodes key elements in the recorder's control system had acquired radiation defects the second orbit also passed ganymede galileo discovered it's the only moon in the solar system with a significant magnetic field it also has an ocean sandwiched between two layers of ice galileo's orbits would be slightly varied so that it could make close approaches to different jovian moons but the equatorial orbits needed to reach the moons also took the craft through hot spots in jupiter's radiation belts with the observations made by the voyagers the moon europa was of particular interest to the galileo team data from several instruments agreed that a salty ocean exists beneath europa's surface ice later examination of the galileo datasets revealed plasma wave and magnetic field information showing that plumes of water vapor were erupting from cracks in the surface europa has more water than earth which makes it a possible home to life io was already known to have volcanic activity but galileo saw tides in the moon's solid surface of more than 100 meters the temperatures generated by this gravitational distortion of io make its numerous volcanoes hotter than anything found on earth during its eight years at jupiter galileo completed 35 orbits filling out our limited picture of the jovian system this was never an easy mission galileo was a robust spacecraft but the radiation environment stressed all the subsystems and engineers were constantly having to find workarounds for the frequent breakdowns galileo suffered instruments showed increased noise when near jupiter and current leakages caused by radiation led to several resets of the onboard computer with crucial loss of data software changes enabled the computer to recognize these resets and to recover by itself information learned would lead to changes in the way the next jupiter spacecraft was designed five four three two one ignition and liftoff of the atlas 5 with juno on a trek to jupiter in august 2011 juno began a journey to jupiter that would last almost five years its mission parameters would be very different to galileo's it would ignore the moons and focus exclusively on jupiter spacecraft design saw crucial electronics shielded within a thick titanium vault and rather than a plutonium power source juno would rely on solar panels the sun's intensity at jupiter is roughly five percent of what it is at earth so the panels are huge a shortage in stocks of plutonium-238 led to the change in power sources [Music] juno followed a looping orbit that took it beyond mars before swooping back to earth for a gravitational boost that added 14 000 kilometers per hour to its velocity sending it on to jupiter [Music] juno approached jupiter on a path that took it above the planet's north pole it was destined for a north-south orbit this would see it pass beneath the severe sections of the planet's radiation belts that extend out from jupiter's equator four days before its closest approach mission control sent a command that initiated the crafts autopilot on july the 4th 2016 juno began an engine burn that would insert it into a 53-day orbit [Music] 48 minutes later mission control at jpl received tones verifying that juno had started its deceleration maneuver it was a tense 35-minute wait from the systems engineers before confirmation came through that juno had performed exactly as intended [Music] [Applause] for the juno scientists and engineers it was a relief that things were going to plan you know juno is equipped with a suite of instruments capable of penetrating jupiter's thick cloud the polar orbit allows juno to compile a three-dimensional map of the upper atmosphere building a picture of the entire planet as it rotates the images of jupiter from this new perspective appeared to come from a different planet researchers were stunned it was planned that juno would only make two 53-day orbits and then change to a series of 14-day orbits that would speed up the sampling rate the spacecraft's main engine is fueled by hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide which ignite spontaneously when mixed the propellant and oxidizer are forced out by a bladder of expanding helium as juno was finishing its second orbit the helium valves were not responding correctly so it was decided to maintain the original orbit emission extension has been granted to allow for the longer orbits juno continues to follow within a day of the helium valve problem juno went into safe mode all instruments went offline and data was lost it appeared to be similar to the difficulties experienced by galileo but engineers traced the issue to a data transfer problem from one specific instrument and the spacecraft remains healthy jupiter's axis is tilted at only three degrees making even an oblique view of the poles near impossible until juno arrived when viewed in the infrared researchers saw a complex arrangement of storms of both the poles at the north pole a central vortex is surrounded by eight anticyclones at the south pole five anticyclones surround the central storm scientists do not understand why the storms all rotating in the same direction do not obliterate each other [Music] on its seventh close pass of jupiter juno flew directly over the giant red spot its microwave radiometer was able to map the heat distributions at varying levels down to 350 kilometers the red spot is a giant storm and juno was able to see much higher temperatures at the deepest levels they could penetrate with no geographic features as on earth there is nothing on jupiter against which storms can dissipate the great red spot remains firmly 22 degrees below the equator yet it appears to have drifted around the planet at least 10 times since reliable observations began jupiter's magnetosphere is huge it traps charged particles in bands stretching out to vast distances this gives sensitive electronics on orbiting spacecraft like juno big problems it was assumed that jupiter's magnetosphere was generated like earth's by dynamo action the convective movement of an electrically conductive fluid deep within so far results from juno suggest that this is not the case the lumpy nature of jupiter's magnetic field points to an atmospheric source the giant auroras at the poles also seem to come from a different mechanism than here on earth by focusing on the composition of the gas giant researchers are hoping to gather clues about conditions at the formation of the solar system while the earth has been continuously changed by tectonic forces it is thought that jupiter remains very similar in composition to the cloud of gas and dust from which the solar system was formed [Music] at the end of its mission juno will be sent on a collision course with jupiter to avoid any possible contamination of the delicate moons the next mission to the jovian system will focus on europa as the most likely place after earth to harbor some form of life known as europa clipper it's scheduled to launch in 2022 like juno it will be solar-powered and its elliptical orbit of jupiter will see it fly over europa every two weeks [Music] early concepts for the mission called for the inclusion of a lander but this idea was soon rejected as premature because more needs to be learned about the surface of the icy moon [Music] though europa's ice crust is thought to be at least 19 kilometers thick accurate measurements need to be made if thin areas can be found then future missions may be able to access the ocean that lies beneath concepts for under ice explorers are in development and we can expect other missions to focus on other moves [Music] as the largest planet jupiter's influence on the rest of the solar system is profound it has more than twice the mass of every other planet combined all other planets orbits are affected by jupiter's gravitation [Music] there is still much to learn about jupiter [Music] you

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Keywords: Amazing, Astrobiology, Astronomical, Celestial Discoveries, Discoveries, Jupiter's Moons, Jupiter's Size, Planetary Science, Probes, Science, Solar System Dynamics, Solar System Exploration, Space Data, Space Data Analysis, Space Discoveries, Space Education, Space News, Space Videos, Spark, Storms, Universe

Id: xiBJY2XO1uY

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022