On September 29 at 2 a.m. Los Angeles, the distance between the probe and the satellite reached a minimum of 351 kilometers. During the flyby, Juno continuously photographed Europe, and the first of these images have already been taken on Earth. NASA posted them in RAW format, and journalists and amateurs turned them into a full-color image, so the color rendition of the above frame may not be entirely correct.
In the photographs, many details of the relief are distinguishable, and in the area of u200bu200bthe dividing line of day and night, shadows from mountains and hills are visible. The pit near this line may be a dilapidated ancient impact crater. In the best pictures, the resolution reaches 1 kilometer per pixel. In addition, the device received valuable data on the structure of the Europa ice shell, internal structure, surface composition and ionosphere.
Europa is an icy world, inside of which, between the ice and the stone core, there is a liquid ocean. Astrobiologists hope that there is life in this ocean, and therefore in 2024 NASA will launch the Europa Clipper, the main purpose of which will be to assess conditions in the subsurface ocean.
