They discover in Jupiter a cyclone the size of Texas in the middle of the space mission Juno

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(CNN) - NASA's Juno space mission detected a new cyclone the size of Texas while flying over Jupiter in November.

The planet is already home to multiple giant cyclones and this one that has just been discovered can offer even more information about Jupiter's atmosphere.

• READ: When Jupiter was young, a huge planet probably crashed into him.

Juno's cameras detected giant cyclones gathered at Jupiter's poles shortly after his arrival in July 2016: nine to the north and six to the south. The central cyclone, right in the heart of where others gathered, was as large as the United States.

Five giant cyclones seemed to stop at the south pole, staying in a tight and stable formation around a sixth central cyclone and not allowing other cyclones to join their pentagon-like shape.

"It almost seemed that polar cyclones were part of a private club that resisted new members," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

But on November 3, Juno flew a challenging 3,500 kilometers above the clouds of Jupiter and made his 22nd flight since his arrival. This recent effort revealed that a new and small cyclone had been allowed to join the exclusive group.

Image of the cyclones in Jupiter.

"The data of the Jovian infrared auroral mapping instrument (JIRAM) from Juno indicates that we went from a pentagon of cyclones that surrounded another in the center to a hexagonal organization," said Alessandro Mura, co-investigator of Juno in the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. "This new addition is smaller in size than its six more established cyclonic brothers: it's about the size of Texas," he added.

Only time will tell if the small cyclone can grow to the size of its neighbors. It already has a similar sustained speed of 362 kilometers per hour.

Juno's cameras were able to observe more closely the atmospheric process that occurs in Jupiter and take a look inside the meteorological layer between 48 and 72 kilometers below the upper clouds. Combined, these data not only provide information about Jupiter, but also about other giant gas planets in our solar system, as well as the way in which exoplanet atmospheres and even similar storms on Earth can behave.

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"These cyclones are new climatic phenomena that have not been seen or predicted before," said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Nature is revealing a new physics about fluid movements and the functioning of the atmospheres of giant planets. We are beginning to understand it through observations and computer simulations. Juno's future overflights will help us further refine our knowledge by revealing how cyclones evolve over time. ”

But detecting the cyclone was only possible because the engineers helped the solar-powered spacecraft navigate the eclipse that could have ended the mission by freezing it.

"From the day we entered orbit around Jupiter, we made sure it remained bathed in sunlight 24/7," said Steve Levin, a Juno project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Our navigators and engineers told us that a difficult day was approaching, when we would enter the shadow of Jupiter for about 12 hours. We knew that in such a long period without energy, our spacecraft would suffer a fate similar to that of Opportunity, when the skies of Mars filled with dust and prevented the sun's rays from reaching their solar panels. ”

• READ: NASA discovers a black spot of 3,500 kilometers in Jupiter

Within the shadow of Jupiter, Juno would face much colder temperatures than he had been subjected to in the tests, which could drain his batteries beyond the recovery point. The mission team devised a strategy for Juno to "jump the shadow," according to NASA, and simply miss the eclipse. A system burn helped him jump forward and avoid the eclipse.

"The combination of creativity and analytical thinking has once again been worthwhile for NASA," Bolton said. “It was nothing less than a genius of navigation. Behold, the first thing we find at the door on the other side is a fundamental discovery, ”he completed.

Fortunately, Juno can continue to orbit and study Jupiter until the end of the mission in July 2021.

JupiterJunoSpace MissionNASA