The Juno spacecraft reached the mid‐point of its nominal mission in December 2018, after completing 17 perijove passes. Ten of these were dedicated to the determination of the gravity field of the planet, with the aim of constraining its interior structure. We provide an update on Jupiter's gravity field, its tidal response and spin axis motion over time. The analysis of the Doppler data collected during the perijove passes hints to a non‐static and/or non‐axially symmetric field, possibly related to several different physical mechanisms, such as normal modes or localized atmospheric or deeply‐rooted dynamics.
The combination of the Doppler data from the first two Juno science orbits provides an improved estimate of the gravity field of Jupiter, crucial for interior modeling of giant planets. The low‐degree spherical harmonic coefficients, especially J4 and J6, are determined with accuracies better than previously published by a factor of 5 or more. In addition, the independent estimates of the Jovian gravity field, obtained by the orbits separately, agree within uncertainties, pointing to a good stability of the solution. The degree 2 sectoral and tesseral coefficients, C2,1, S2,1, C2,2, and S2,2, were determined to be statistically zero as expected for a fluid planet in equilibrium.
The primary objective of the Europa Clipper mission is to assess the habitability of Europa, an overarching goal that rests on improving our understanding of Europa’s interior structure, composition, and geologic activity. Here we describe the Gravity and Radio Science (G/RS) investigation. The primary measurement, the gravitational tidal Love number $k_{2}$ , will be an independent diagnostic of the presence of a global subsurface ocean, but G/RS will make a number of other key measurements related to Europa’s deep interior, silicate mantle-ocean interface, ice shell, ionosphere, and plasma environment. Although radio science is common to many missions, Europa Clipper’s orbit and spacecraft configuration during flybys present special challenges for the design of this experiment. The information obtained through G/RS will be complementary to the measurements by the other instruments onboard Europa Clipper, and their combined analysis will refine the geophysical understanding of Europa necessary to best assess its potential habitability.
Measuring the depth of Jupiter’s storms: The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of bands of winds rotating at different rates, punctuated by giant storms. The largest storm is the Great Red Spot (GRS), which has persisted for more than a century. It has been unclear whether the storms are confined to a thin layer near the top of the atmosphere or if they extend deep into the planet. Bolton et al . used microwave observations from the Juno spacecraft to observe several storms and vortices. They found that the storms extended below the depths at which water and ammonia are expected to condense, implying a connection with the deep atmosphere. Parisi et al . analyzed gravity measurements taken while Juno flew over the GRS. They detected a perturbation in the planet’s gravitational field caused by the storm, finding that it was no more than 500 kilometers deep. In combination, these results constrain how Jupiter’s meteorology links to its deep interior. —KTS
The Juno Extended Mission presented the first opportunity to acquire gravity measurements of Ganymede since the end of the Galileo mission. These new Juno data offered the chance to carry out a joint analysis with the Galileo data set, improving our knowledge of Ganymede's gravity field and shedding new light upon its interior structure. Through reconstruction of Juno's and Galileo's orbit during the Ganymede flybys, the gravity field of the moon was estimated. The results indicate that Ganymede's degree‐2 field is compatible with a body in hydrostatic equilibrium within 1−???? and hint at regional gravity anomalies with amplitudes exceeding those inferred by Cassini for Titan. Our explicit treatment of non‐hydrostatic effects leads to wider confidence intervals for the derived moment of inertia with respect previous analyses. The higher central value of the derived moment of inertia indicates a lesser degree of Ganymede's differentiation.