NASA’s Juno spacecraft takes closest images of Europa for 20 years

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NASA's Juno spacecraft flew conscionable 352 kilometres supra Jupiter’s satellite Europa, sending backmost extraordinarily elaborate images of the surface

Space 29 September 2022

By Leah Crane

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has taken the closest images of Jupiter’s satellite Europa successful much than 2 decades. On 29 September, it flew conscionable 352 kilometres supra the aboveground of the icy moon, lone the 3rd clip immoderate spacecraft has been wrong 500 kilometres of it. The images from this daring swoop are extraordinarily detailed.

At the clip of the flyby, Juno was travelling astatine astir 24 kilometres per second, truthful it lone had a two-hour model to cod elaborate information earlier it sailed distant again. In that time, it took pictures and collected information connected the moon’s aboveground composition, interior operation and its enactment with the magnetic tract of Jupiter. The pictures uncover ridges and channels slicing crossed Europa’s surface, arsenic good arsenic tiny interaction craters.

“The subject squad volition beryllium comparing the afloat acceptable of images obtained by Juno with images from erstwhile missions, looking to spot if Europa’s aboveground features person changed implicit the past 2 decades,” said Candy Hansen astatine the Planetary Science Institute successful Arizona successful a statement. “The JunoCam images volition capable successful the existent geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution sum of the area.”

This caller information volition assistance researchers hole for the Europa Clipper mission, which is acceptable to motorboat successful 2024 successful an effort to find whether the frigid satellite could big beingness beneath its icy shell. Aside from its heavy subsurface ocean, the Juno information should uncover whether determination are shallow pockets of liquid water wrong the shell.

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