NASA reveals latest finding from Jupiter's Great Red Spot by Juno

Washington : Juno spacecraft has revealed interesting facts about Jupiter's giant red spot, a huge storm that has been brewing at least since humans first observed it in 1830.

The Juno aircraft collected data on Red Spot by travelling directly over it in July this year. NASA shared finding from the data on Monday at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Juno craft revealed that the massive storm goes far deeper below the clouds than researchers expected.

The animated video has been created with the images from the JunoCam imager on the Juno craft as well as with some computer-generated animations.

Juno aircraft was launched in 2011 with its main objective to know how deep are the roots of the giant red spot storm, a question researchers have now partially answered.

The researchers used the Microwave Radiometer on the craft to look down into the spot. Researchers have been running computer models to try to understand the old storm that is about 1.3 times as wide as Earth. Now with this new information about the depth of the storm, they can rule out a class of models that treat the storm similarly to a storm that we would have Earth because no storm on Earth has roots as deep as the Giant Red Spot does.

Juno has been circling the planet that’s made mostly of ammonia, methane, and water since it arrived in 2016 and makes an orbit about every 53 days. 

The craft is expected to complete 12 orbits of Jupiter total, while it’s ninth orbit is scheduled for Dec. 16. When it completes its 12th orbit, the craft is scheduled to plunge into the atmosphere of Jupiter similar to how Cassini met its end in September.