The Jupiter rover Juno, which is flying close to Europa’s “Moon of Jupiter,” has released an image showing Europa’s surface in detail. The frozen surface of Europa is clearly broken into pieces.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL) released images taken by the Juno spacecraft as it flew near Europa on the 29th of last month. On this day, the distance between the spacecraft and Europa was only 352 km, making it the closest thing in about 20 years since the Galileo spacecraft in January 2000.
This time, Juno released a close-up image taken from a distance of 412 km with another “Stellar Reference Unit (SRU)” camera. The camera can also shoot in low-light environments, so it can be used to detect lightning strikes in Jupiter’s atmosphere or to capture Jupiter’s ring system.
This photo contains an area of 200km horizontally and 150km vertically at a speed between 256 and 340 meters per pixel. Grooves and ridges are clearly visible on the ice surface, and there is a huge ‘Quarter Note’ measuring 37km wide and 67km long in the lower right corner.
The streaks are parallel ridges caused by the uplift of the ice and the black spots in the upper right and lower center are thought to be related to the eruption from the inside below the ice to the surface. The white spots are traces of high-energy particles from the severe radiation environment around Europe, NASA JPL explained.
This close flight of the Juno probe was the third closest ever. NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was the first to approach Europa in 1979, photographing brown streaks that appear to be grooves and cracks on the surface, and in 2000 Galileo uncovered evidence of an ocean beneath the surface of the frozen planet Europa. The closest spacecraft in terms of distance are Galileo, Voyager 2 and Juno.
Jupiter, a gigantic gas planet, is famous for having numerous moons nicknamed the “little solar system”.
Among them, four of Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa are called “Galilean moons” and have been the subject of interest from scientists.
The largest and brightest moon in the solar system, Ganymede, is larger than Mercury. Callisto is covered in dark ice and craters and Io is the most volcanic moon in the solar system. Europa, with an equatorial diameter of 90% of the moon, is the sixth largest satellite in the solar system, it is estimated that
Juno flew close to Ganymede in June last year and plans to fly close to Io next year to gather research data.
“Juno started with a focus on Jupiter, but with the extension of the mission, we have expanded our exploration to three of the four Galilean moons and the planet’s rings,” said Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), lead researcher on the mission. of Juno. “The close flight shows that the ice shells of two of Jupiter’s most interesting moons are quite different.”
The data recorded by Juno will be used for the next “Europa Clipper” mission. It is a direct exploration mission to conduct an up-close reconnaissance of Europa and investigate whether Europa, a frozen satellite with an underground ocean, has the ability to embrace life. The “Europa Clipper” spacecraft is expected to be launched from Earth in October 2024 and to begin exploration in 2030.
The European Space Agency (ESA) also plans to send the Jupiter Ice Satellite Orbiter (JUICE) in April 2023 to investigate Europa, Ganymede and Callisto for three and a half years starting in July 2031.
Reporter Seo Hee-won ([email protected])
