NASA' Juno Spacecraft Captured Never Before Images of Jupiter's Pole

NASA's Juno spacecraft captured a never before seen close-up image of Jupiter's north pole, after the closest flyby on Aug. 27 at 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above the swirling clouds of the planet.

The Juno mission to observe Jupiter at a close range started when the spacecraft entered Jupiter's orbit last July 4 by surviving a delicate 35-minute engine burn that slowed down the spacecraft to allow Jupiter's gravity to capture Juno into orbit.

For the first time, a close up image of Jupiter's north pole was photographed by a NASA spacecraft. The JunoCam aboard the solar-powered Juno spacecraft captured the giant gas planet's tip during the flyby that was completed last Aug. 27. The flyby is the first of 35 flybys the spacecraft will have to complete to successfully finish its mission that will last for 18 months.

The images showed visible signs of weather activities including storm systems on the North Pole. Experts say these weather formations are unlike anything they've seen before.  The images were carefully taken during Juno's transit from the north to the South Pole, according to a report by The Telegraph.

The six-hour transit resulted into six megabytes of data. "First glimpse of Jupiter's north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before," Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno said in a press release. "It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms," Bolton added.

NASA experts added that the image is nothing like the Jupiter they know, as there were no signs of latitudinal bands or belts. The clouds also have visible shadows, which could mean that the clouds are located at a higher altitude than the surface of the planet.

Soarin' over #Jupiter. My 1st up-close look of the gas-giant world was a success! https://t.co/5DghesSgvY pic.twitter.com/BTbhOD8rJy

— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) August 27, 2016 

Scientists even compared Jupiter's pole to Saturn's the North Pole and concluded that there is nothing that resembles the gas planet's tip within the Solar System. Experts are hopeful that the remaining 35 Juno flybys near Jupiter will result in more fascinating discoveries about the biggest, and possibly the oldest planet in the Solar System.

Aside from JunoCam, other instruments aboard Juno helped in data gathering including the Jovian Infrared Aurora Mapper (JIRAM) by the Italian Space Agency.