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Juno will fly up to Jupiter’s largest moon for the first time in 20 years

The American Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA told interesting news about the nearest plans of the automatic interplanetary station Juno (Juno) near Jupiter.

Juno will fly up to Jupiter's largest moon for the first time in 20 years
Ganymede maps based on Voyager 1 and 2 data and Galileo

No probe has received a good view of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, since 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew past it.

The NASA Juno spacecraft is now slated to fly just 1,038 kilometers above the surface of Ganymede on Monday, June 7 at 1:35 pm ET (8:35 pm Moscow time). NASA hopes that Juno will be able to collect many observations by getting close to Ganymede.

Principal Investigator Scott Bolton, a cosmonaut at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said:

Juno possesses a set of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways previously unattainable. By flying this close, we will take the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century. ”

Ganymede has long fascinated scientists with its uniqueness. Despite its satellite status, Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury, and is the only satellite in the solar system that has a magnetic field, a bubble of charged particles called the magnetosphere. So far, the only spacecraft that have seen Ganymede well have been NASA’s Voyager probes in 1979 and the Galileo spacecraft that flew past the satellite in 2000.

Juno was launched by NASA’s US Aeronautics and Space Administration to explore Jupiter on August 5, 2011. In the summer of 2016, she achieved her goal and entered Jupiter’s orbit.

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