At a distance of 352 kilometers from Jupiter’s satellite Europa, the Juno spacecraft of the American Space Agency passed yesterday (29/9)NASA), taking new detailed pictures of its surface. These are the best and closest taken by spacecraft in over 20 years.
It is the third time in total that a spacecraft has come within 500 kilometers of icy Europa. The last time was Galileo’s approach in 2000. Juno was moving at about 24 kilometers per second, so it had a time window only two hours to collect data and photograph the satellite.
NASA scientists will now compare these images with older ones from at least two decades ago to see how much Europa’s surface has changed in that time, as it is known to be a dynamic geological body. This data is useful in the preparation of the American Europa Clipper mission which is scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive there in 2030. It will attempt to answer the question of whether Europa could host life beneath its icy surface, where a vast and deep ocean is thought to exist.
O satellite Europe has a diameter of about 3,100 km and it is 90% the size of the Moon. A distinctive feature of it is the spectacular and towering water jets that are periodically ejected from cracks in its surface.
Juno was launched in 2011 and arrived in the Jupiter system in 2016, where it has been since then, reports APE-MPE. The craft made a close pass of another large moon, Ganymede, in 2021, and is expected to do something similar with the volcanically active moon Io between December 2023 and January 2024.
*Photo by APE-PE with img NASA-JPL-Caltech-SWRI-MSSS
Source: News Beast
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