Leicester’s Jupiter Research on the BBC Sky at Night

The BBC Sky at Night team travelled to the National Space Centre for a special show on five years of the Juno mission, featuring interviews with our Jupiter experts.

August 2021 marks ten years since NASA’s mission to Jupiter, Juno, was launched. The mission – to uncover the mysteries surrounding Jupiter’s formation – was expected to end this year with the $1.1 billion satellite de-orbiting into the planet’s gassy atmosphere. But thanks to the ingenuity of its engineering, the robust spacecraft has surpassed expectations and been granted an extension to its life.

The August episode of the Sky at Night looks at the amazing research that has resulted from this mission, expanding our understanding of the gas giant and explaining how Juno will now use its extra time in orbit to gather information for future Jupiter-bound missions – Nasa’s Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission.


The episode features interviews with the mission leader, Dr. Scott Bolton, as well as discussions about Jupiter’s atmosphere and meteorology (Dr. Leigh Fletcher), magnetospheres and auroras (Dr. Jonathan Nichols), and looks to the future exploration by JUICE (Professor Emma Bunce). These interviews were filmed in the planetarium dome of Leicester’s National Space Centre.