In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made historical past with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity help maneuver. Because the spacecraft zipped previous our Moon and residential planet, NASA’s Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument onboard JUICE captured the sharpest-ever picture of Earth’s radiation belts — swaths of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetosphere.
The middle of this infographic exhibits the sharpest-ever picture of the cloud of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic discipline, whereas the insets present measurements of high-energy ions and electrons detected alongside the JUICE’s flyby route. Picture credit score: ESA / NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Josh Diaz.
“As quickly as we noticed the crisp, new pictures, excessive fives went across the room,” mentioned Dr. Matina Gkioulidou, deputy lead of JENI on the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory.
“It was clear we had captured the huge ring of sizzling plasma encircling Earth in unprecedented element, an achievement that has sparked pleasure for what’s to come back at Jupiter.”
Not like conventional cameras that depend on mild, JENI makes use of particular sensors to seize energetic impartial atoms emitted by charged particles interacting with the prolonged atmospheric hydrogen fuel surrounding Earth.
The JENI instrument is the most recent era of one of these digicam, constructing on the success of the same instrument on NASA’s Cassini mission that exposed the magnetospheres of Saturn and Jupiter.
On August 19, JENI and its companion particle instrument Jovian Energetic Electrons (JoEE) made probably the most of their transient 30-minute encounter with the Moon.
As JUICE zoomed simply 750 km (465 miles) above the lunar floor, the devices gathered information on the house surroundings’s interplay with our nearest celestial companion.
It’s an interplay scientists count on to see magnified at Jupiter’s moons, because the fuel large’s radiation-rich magnetosphere barrels over them.
On August 20, JUICE hurled into Earth’s magnetosphere, spending some 60,000 km (37,000 miles) above the Pacific Ocean, the place the devices received their first style of the tough surroundings that awaits at Jupiter.
Racing by means of the magnetotail, JoEE and JENI encountered the dense, lower-energy plasma attribute of this area earlier than plunging into the guts of the radiation belts.
There, the devices measured the million-degree plasma encircling Earth to research the secrets and techniques of plasma heating which can be recognized to gas dramatic phenomena in planetary magnetospheres.
“I couldn’t have hoped for a greater flyby,” mentioned Dr. Pontus Brandt, principal investigator of JoEE and JENI on the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory.
“The richness of the info from our deep-dive by means of the magnetosphere is astounding. JENI’s picture of your entire system we simply flew by means of was the cherry on prime.”
“It’s a robust mixture we’ll exploit within the Jovian system.”
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This text was tailored from an unique launch by NASA.