NASA’s Juno spacecraft cozied up to Jupiter’s funky moon Europa on Thursday, sending again among the closest photos ever taken of the icy world. That is our first actually good take a look at Europa since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft buzzed by over twenty years in the past.
NASA is posting uncooked photos from the flyby to the JunoCam web site. The primary photos to come back in have a really yellow-brown tinge to them. I did some fast processing on one of many uncooked photos to deliver it slightly extra according to views from Galileo. I will depart it as much as the picture processing consultants to essentially deliver out the complete fantastic thing about Juno’s new seems at Europa.
That is the primary image despatched again by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from its shut flyby of Europa. It exhibits Annwn Regio.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS
NASA shared a close-up of Europa as seen by Juno from a distance of simply 219 miles (352 kilometers) above the floor. It exhibits an space referred to as Annwn Regio close to the moon’s equator. The picture highlights the moon’s ridges and craters.
Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. Beginner astronomer Stuart Atkinson revealed an early tackle a wider view in a tweet on Thursday.
“The science group might be evaluating the complete set of photos obtained by Juno with photos from earlier missions, trying to see if Europa’s floor options have modified over the previous twenty years,” Juno co-investigator Sweet Hansen stated in a press release. “The JunoCam photos will fill within the present geologic map, changing present low-resolution protection of the realm.”
Europa is the newest feather in Juno’s cap. It arrived at Jupiter in 2016 and obtained a mission extension in 2021 to review among the gasoline big’s largest moons in additional element. It already checked out Ganymede and might be taking a look at Io subsequent 12 months. In addition to fairly footage, it additionally collected information on Europa’s composition, temperature and environment.
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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 beneath its ice shell, making it a superb place to search for potential habitability and indicators of microbial life. The moon has additionally been recognized to spit out mysterious geysers that trace at exercise under.
Juno’s work will fill in among the science blanks as we await Europa Clipper to enterprise out for a go to.
