Big day for NASA’s Juno spacecraft, going closer to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in a historic flyby

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to create history on Tuesday as its Juno spacecraft will fly over the famous Great Red Spot of Jupiter. According to NASA, the spot that has been monitored since 1830, is 16,000-kilometre wide storm. It will be the closest look ever of the famous spot. Juno entered Jupiter’s orbit on 4th July last year.

Scott Bolton, who is the principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said, “Jupiter’s mysterious Great Red Spot is probably the best-known feature of Jupiter.”

“This monumental storm has raged on the solar system’s biggest planet for centuries. Now, Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special,” Bolton added.

"Today, our @NASAJuno craft is flying over Jupiter's Great Red Spot, kicking off a close-up study of the iconic storm," NASA tweeted.

The spacecraft is likely to reach the spot in Jupiter’s orbit at around 11:55 am (AEST) on Tuesday. It will be approximately 3,540 kilometres above Jupiter at the time when it reaches the spot.

The images taken by JunoCam of the Great Red Spot are likely to be downlinked and available by the weekend, NASA’s spokeswoman told Fox News.

Chalking up around 114 million kilometres in orbit around the gas giant, Juno celebrated one-year-anniversary the planet’s orbit on July 5, 2017. Juno has come as near as 3379 kilometres to cloud tops of Jupiter during its fly-bys of the huge planet.

The spacecraft was launched on August 5, 2011 from Cape Canaveral. According to NASA, the mission’s early results portray the planet as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones.

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According to Space.com, the planet is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. The storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere is shrinking, Hubble Space Telescope’s recent years’ observations revealed.

In 2015, New Horizons spacecraft of NASA made a historic fly-by of Pluto after travelling 4.8 kilometres that lasted more than nine years.

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Today’s a big day for @NASAJuno, as the spacecraft will fly by Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to give us a close-up view! https://t.co/T9uABJd5Ui pic.twitter.com/oryMiEIuH1

— NASA (@NASA) July 10, 2017

#Jupiter ahead! Closest approach is tonight at 6:55 pm PT (9:55 pm ET). https://t.co/h6SuXmZjac #GreatRedSpot pic.twitter.com/TC0A45wAUA

— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) July 11, 2017