Overview
- Updated measurements put Jupiter’s equatorial diameter at about 88,841 miles (142,976 km) and its pole-to-pole diameter at about 83,067 miles (133,684 km), roughly 5 and 15 miles smaller than earlier estimates.
- At the 1‑bar level, the team reports an equatorial radius of 71,488 km, a polar radius of 66,842 km, and a mean radius of 69,886 km, each slightly below long‑used Voyager/Pioneer values.
- The results come from multiple radio‑occultation observations made possible by a 2021 extension of NASA’s Juno mission, which allowed the spacecraft to pass behind Jupiter from Earth’s perspective.
- The analysis explicitly accounts for the planet’s strong zonal winds and indicates Jupiter is more oblate than previously thought, with the equator about 7% larger than the poles.
- The refined figure improves agreement between gravity, atmospheric and interior models and provides a sharper benchmark for studies of other gas giants, with techniques that researchers plan to apply to ESA’s JUICE mission.