NASA drops joyful Jupiter flyover video from Juno's perspective
Buckle up, gas giant fans, we're going for a ride on the Juno spacecraft.
No Earth roller coaster could possibly compare to a 130,000 mph (209,000 kph) flyover of Jupiter. That's what NASA's Juno spacecraft experienced in June with a close pass of the gas giant.
A striking new NASA video re-creates the scenery from this thrilling space adventure.
Citizen Scientist Kevin Gill, who also works as a software engineer at NASA, harnessed data from Juno's JunoCam, the camera that's been delivering lavish views of Jupiter since the spacecraft arrived at the planet in 2016.
"The sequence combines 41 JunoCam still images digitally projected onto a sphere, with a virtual 'camera' providing views of Jupiter from different angles as the spacecraft speeds by," said NASA in a statement on Thursday.
The video is accompanied by an appropriately epic and lush soundtrack. The images come from Juno's June 2, 2020, flyover -- its 27th close flyby of the planet -- where it skimmed to within 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) of the clouds.
The Juno video offers a nice counterpoint to a recent Hubble Space Telescope portrait of Jupiter. It's the short and the long of it. Any way you look at it, Jupiter is a delight to behold.