NASA's $1 billion Jupiter probe just sent back breathtaking new images of the Great Red Spot

NASA's plucky Juno probe has returned its first close-up photographs of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and they are stunning.

On Monday, Juno flew about 5,600 miles above the mysterious tempest - more than a million miles closer than any previous spacecraft has flown.

The Great Red Spot is a massive storm about twice as wide as Earth. It has tumbled in the planet's atmosphere for at least 350 years.

Juno took the new photos on it's seventh pass around the gas giant planet. The spacecraft swings by Jupiter once every 53.5 days, at speeds approaching 130,000 mph, which makes such close-ups very hard to capture.

 

After each flyby, NASA provides JunoCam's raw image data to the public, and a community of amateurs and professionals turn the muted, unprocessed photos into striking color images.

Below are fresh images of the Great Red Spot, along with some other unbelievable shots from previous flybys.