Juno spacecraft and Jupiter's interior, illustration. Launched by NASA from Earth in 2011, the Juno spacecraft (upper left) arrived at Jupiter in July 2016, entering an elliptical, polar orbit. It orbited Jupiter 32 times over the next year, gathering information about the planet's atmosphere, magnetic field and gravitational field. Juno's study of Jupiter aided understanding of the history of Jupiter and our own solar system and provided new insight into how planetary systems form and develop. This model of Jupiter's interior shows successive layers: outer atmosphere (white), liquid molecular hydrogen (yellow), hydrogen nuclei (pink), metallic hydrogen (blue), and the core (heavier elements and hyper-pressurized hydrogen). For an image showing just the interior of Jupiter, see C038/2902. |