Nasa spacecraft captures stunning new picture of Jupiter in close flyby

An incredible image of Jupiter was snapped by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its close flyby of the planet.

The fascinating still was made possible thanks to spacewatchers using data from the mission and was taken during the most recent perijove - the point when it's closest to the planet on October 2023.

The $1 billion spacecraft was launched in 2011, and in reached Jupiter’s orbit, covering a distance of 2.8 billion kilometres in five years. Since then, the probe has been circling the planet, recording important data and sending jaw-dropping images to Earth. The Juno spacecraft, which entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016, is the first explorer to peer below the planet's dense clouds to answer questions about the gas giant itself and the origins of our solar system. Now in an extended mission phase, the agency’s most distant planetary orbiter continues its investigation.

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Juno's principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that likely governed our solar system as it formed. Our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter can also help us understand planetary systems being discovered around other stars.

NASA states: "Theories about solar-system formation all begin with the collapse of a giant cloud of gas and dust, or nebula, the bulk of which went into forming the infant Sun. Like the Sun, Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium, so it must have formed early, capturing most of the material left over after our star came to be. How this happened, however, is unclear.

"Unlike Earth, Jupiter's giant mass allowed it to hold onto its original composition; like a time capsule, it provides us with a way to trace our solar system's history. Deciphering the origin and evolution of Jupiter will help us understand the formation of the rest of the solar system, including how Earth came to be, and how it became a haven for life."