NASA’s Juno spacecraft sent back to Earth the first image of its closest approach flyby of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon in which he reveals the surface features of a region near the equator called We don’t
The image was taken yesterday at a distance of regarding 352 kilometers from the surface. in which it is the third close pass in history, less than 500 kilometers, and the closest look that a spacecraft has provided of that moon since the one taken by the spacecraft Galileo from NASA in 2000.
Europa is the sixth largest moon in the solar system, slightly smaller than ours, and scientists believe there is a salty ocean beneath a crust of ice several kilometers thick, raising questions regarding whether it is life-bearing.
The image is a close-up of a strip of the surface north of its equator, and due to the contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator (the line of separation from the night side), you can see terrain features easily.
It is a steep area, with tall blocks that cast their shadow, while light and dark ridges and troughs curve along the surface, NASA describes in a statement.
During the flyby, the mission obtained what will be some of the higher resolution images of the moon (1 kilometer per pixel) and valuable data on the structure of the ice cap, its interior, the composition of its surface and its ionosphere, as well as its interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
Juno only had two hours to collect data from Europathrough which it passed at a relative speed of regarding 23.6 kilometers per second and, although it is still “very early”, everything indicates that the flyby “was a great success”, according to Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the mission at the San Antonio Southwest Research Institute.
The new data provided by Juno on the geology of Europa will be used for future missions to this moon of Jupiter, such as Europa Clipper, scheduled for 2024, which will study its atmosphere, surface and interior to determine if there are places below the surface that might harbor life.
EFE
