Launched Aug. 5, 2011, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, Juno made a gravity-assist flyby of Earth in October 2013 to generate enough speed to complete its roundabout 1.7-billion-mile voyage to Jupiter. "The general theme of our discoveries is really how different Jupiter looked from how we expected," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.”

The images captured by Juno's trusty imager, JunoCam, has also changed scientists' assumptions by showing how both of Jupiter's poles are covered in Earth-sized swirling storms that are densely clustered and rubbing together. But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a two-hour transit (from pole to pole) flying north to south with its eight science instruments collecting data and its JunoCam public outreach camera snapping pictures. “We’re questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage and over the next year we’re going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”

Data from the Aug. 27, 2016, pass also show that Jupiter’s iconic belts and zones are unique and mysterious, with the belt near the equator spanning through the planet’s atmosphere, while the belts and zones at other latitudes seem to lead to other structures. The first findings from Juno, published in Science, indicate that many aspects of Jupiter have defied expectation—including the strength of its magnetic field, the shape of its core, the distribution of ammonia gas and the weather at its poles. Besides polar cyclones, Juno has detected an overwhelming abundance of ammonia in Jupiter’s deep atmosphere and a surprisingly strong magnetic field — roughly 10 times greater than Earth’s. Those data, combined with information to be gathered as Juno's mission continues, can help researchers determine the structure of Jupiter's atmosphere and answer the big question: Does the planet have a solid core? >> Related: Alien life possible on small Saturn moon, maybe on a Jupiter moon, too

Researchers are hoping to learn more about the Giant Red Spot, too, one of the “most iconic features in the entire solar system. If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments,” the NASA report said.
Results of the Juno mission are announced by NASA researchers, revealing new and unexpected information concerning Jupiter's poles, meteorology, and magnetic and gravitational fields.