PlanetarySeminar: Inside Jupiter: what Juno gravity soundings taught us about the gas giant’s interior during the Prime Mission.

At 16:00 on Wednesday June 30th, Dr Marzia Parisi from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be presenting a seminar titled: “Inside Jupiter: what Juno gravity soundings taught us about the gas giant’s interior during the Prime Mission.” The seminar will be accessible via Teams.

Abstract: “The Juno spacecraft has recently completed its Prime Mission in the Jovian system, after almost 5 years of orbiting Jupiter. The 33 closest approaches to the planet (or perijoves) occurred at altitudes as low as 4,000 every 53 days. Since orbit insertion on July 4th 2016, the extensive Juno observations have provided outstanding discoveries regarding the magnetosphere, atmosphere and interior structure of Jupiter. Specifically, the gravity sounding of the planet is performed by measuring the Doppler shift on the Juno radio-frequency carriers in X- and Ka-band. In turn, these are converted into measurements of the gravitational moments, which are used to probe the atmospheric dynamics and deep density distribution within the planet. This seminar will report on the current status of the gravity estimates, providing an overview of what we have learnt so far about the deeper layers of Jupiter by looking at the planet’s gravity field.”