NASA’s Juno spacecraft cozied up to Jupiter’s funky moon Europa on Thursday, sending again a few of the closest pictures ever taken of the icy world. The views give us our first actually good have a look at Europa since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft buzzed by greater than twenty years in the past.
NASA is posting uncooked pictures from the flyby to the JunoCam web site. The primary pictures to come back in have a really yellow-brown tinge to them. I did some fast processing on one of many uncooked pictures to convey it somewhat extra consistent with views from Galileo. I am going to go away it as much as the picture processing specialists to actually convey out the complete great thing about Juno’s new seems at Europa.
NASA shared a close-up of Europa as seen by Juno from a distance of simply 219 miles (352 kilometers) above the floor. It reveals an space referred to as Annwn Regio close to the moon’s equator. The picture highlights the moon’s ridges and craters.
Europa is somewhat smaller than Earth’s moon. Novice astronomer Stuart Atkinson revealed an early take on a wider view in a tweet on Thursday.
“The science crew can be evaluating the complete set of pictures obtained by Juno with pictures from earlier missions, seeking to see if Europa’s floor options have modified over the previous twenty years,” Juno co-investigator Sweet Hansen mentioned in an announcement. “The JunoCam pictures will fill within the present geologic map, changing present low-resolution protection of the world.”
Europa is the most recent feather in Juno’s cap. It arrived at Jupiter in 2016 and acquired a mission extension in 2021 to review a few of the gasoline large’s largest moons in additional element. It already checked out Ganymede and can be Io subsequent 12 months. In addition to fairly footage, it additionally collected information on Europa’s composition, temperature and environment.
Jaw-dropping Jupiter: NASA’s Juno mission eyes the gasoline large
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The moon is the main target of NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission. Europa is probably going hiding a salty subsurface liquid ocean underneath its ice shell, making it place to search for potential habitability and indicators of microbial life. The moon has additionally been identified to spit out mysterious geysers that trace at exercise under.
Juno’s work will fill in a few of the science blanks as we anticipate Europa Clipper to enterprise out for a go to.