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Around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft passed near Ganymede on Monday, radiating back the first close-up views of the solar system’s largest moon since the Galileo spacecraft last flew in 2000.
“This is the closest spacecraft to this giant moon in an entire generation,” Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. “We’ll take our time before we draw any scientific conclusions, but until then we can simply marvel at this celestial wonder, the only moon in our solar system larger than Mercury.”
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured high-resolution views of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede during a flyby on Monday at an altitude of about 645 miles. The flyby was the first close-up look at the Big Moon since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft last flew in 2000. / Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS
Raced by Ganymede at 1:35 p.m. EDT on Monday, Juno passed 645 miles of the moon and captured a sharp view of the cratered world believed to harbor a subsurface sea beneath an ice crust. Besides capturing new images, the Juno Science Toolkit has also collected data.
“The Ganymede icy crust has some light and dark areas, indicating that some areas may be pure icy while others contain dirty ice,” Bolton said before the flyby. Juno will provide “the first in-depth investigation of how the composition and structure of ice varies with depth, leading to a better understanding of how the ice crust forms and the ongoing processes that float on the ice over time.”
Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral in 2011 and blasted into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Still strong at the end of its initial two-year mission, NASA has now approved two extensions, the most recent of which runs from this summer to the middle. -2025.
Designed to study Jupiter’s deep interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and auroras, Juno has made frequent close passes over the planet’s north polar regions, providing stunning views of never-before-seen polar storms, discovering signs of fairly diffuse cores and collecting gigabytes. of data to better understand the general behavior of the planet.
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The probe’s polar orbit is set for 53 days to slowly move its closest approach northward as the flight progresses. On the other side of the orbit, the spacecraft initially crossed the equatorial plane away from Ganymede’s orbit.
But the point of closest approach shifted inland during the mission and the latter extension provided a golden opportunity to make flights close to Ganymede, Europa and volcanic Io.
A high-resolution image of the far side of Ganymede, illuminated by sunlight scattered from Jupiter’s atmosphere, shows the surface
“We are going to cross the orbital plane near Ganymede and as the orbit continues to advance farther and farther to the north, the (equatorial) crossing is moving farther and farther,” Bolton said in a previous interview. “So we cross first near Ganymede and then keep moving and cross near Europe. Finally we cross near Io, and then even inside Io.”
Ganymede’s encounter on Monday was set up to use the moon’s gravity to bend the path a bit, shortening Juno’s orbital period by about 10 days. This, in turn, establishes a flight on Europa glacier on September 29, 2022, and two flights close to Io on December 30, 2023 and February 3, 2024.
“We have these satellite close flybys that will now allow us to point our instruments at the satellite, get the first close-up analysis and look for changes since the days of Galileo and Voyager,” Bolton said.
Juno is not equipped with a telescope for close-up and narrow-angle observations. Instead, his “Junocam” imaging device was primarily intended for wide-angle contextual observations and communication with the audience, providing superb views of the hemisphere for Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere.
Bolton expects equally stunning views of Ganymede, Europa and Io flybys.
“When we’re really far away, we can’t shoot a high-resolution shot,” he said. “But when we’re close, we get a wide field of view at high resolution.” He said that this wide field of view makes a big difference when you look at it, saying Do I understand the context?
JunoCam captured almost an entire side of Ganymede during the probe’s flyby on Monday. Shots using different filters will later be combined to provide colorful views, resolving surface features up to six tenths of a mile wide.
Juno’s navigation camera captured a much larger view of Ganymede’s dark side, illuminated by sunlight reflecting off Jupiter. Additional images stored on board the spacecraft will be sent at a later time.
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