In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver. As the spacecraft zipped past our Moon and home planet, NASA’s Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument onboard JUICE captured the sharpest-ever image of Earth’s radiation belts — swaths of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetosphere.
The center of this infographic shows the sharpest-ever image of the cloud of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, while the insets show measurements of high-energy ions and electrons detected along the JUICE’s flyby route. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Josh Diaz.
“As soon as we saw the crisp, new images, high fives went around the room,” said Dr. Matina Gkioulidou, deputy lead of JENI at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
“It was clear we had captured the vast ring of hot plasma encircling Earth in unprecedented detail, an achievement that has sparked excitement for what is to come at Jupiter.”
Unlike traditional cameras that rely on light, JENI uses special sensors to capture energetic neutral atoms emitted by charged particles interacting with the extended atmospheric hydrogen gas surrounding Earth.
The JENI instrument is the newest generation of this type of camera, building on the success of a similar instrument on NASA’s Cassini mission that revealed the magnetospheres of Saturn and Jupiter.
On August 19, JENI and its companion particle instrument Jovian Energetic Electrons (JoEE) made the most of their brief 30-minute encounter with the Moon.
As JUICE zoomed just 750 km (465 miles) above the lunar surface, the instruments gathered data on the space environment’s interaction with our nearest celestial companion.
It’s an interaction scientists expect to see magnified at Jupiter’s moons, as the gas giant’s radiation-rich magnetosphere barrels over them.
On August 20, JUICE hurled into Earth’s magnetosphere, passing some 60,000 km (37,000 miles) above the Pacific Ocean, where the instruments got their first taste of the harsh environment that awaits at Jupiter.
Racing through the magnetotail, JoEE and JENI encountered the dense, lower-energy plasma characteristic of this region before plunging into the heart of the radiation belts.
There, the instruments measured the million-degree plasma encircling Earth to investigate the secrets of plasma heating that are known to fuel dramatic phenomena in planetary magnetospheres.
“I couldn’t have hoped for a better flyby,” said Dr. Pontus Brandt, principal investigator of JoEE and JENI at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
“The richness of the data from our deep-dive through the magnetosphere is astounding. JENI’s image of the entire system we just flew through was the cherry on top.”
“It’s a powerful combination we will exploit in the Jovian system.”
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This article was adapted from an original release by NASA.
