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    Oxygen Ions in Jupiter’s Innermost Radiation Belts

    January 14, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    From 1995 to 2003, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft explored the Jupiter system. Its final orbits took the probe deep into the giant planet’s innermost radiation belts, where it also performed a close flyby of Amalthea.
    Michael Carroll

    Researchers find high-energy oxygen and sulfur ions in Jupiter’s inner radiation belts — and a previously unknown ion source. Nearly 20 years after the end of NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter, scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany have unlocked a new secret from the mission’s extensive data sets. For the first time, the research team was able to determine beyond doubt that the high-energy ions surrounding the gas giant as part of its inner radiation belt are primarily oxygen and sulfur ions...

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