This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Posted on 06/08/2021 9:07:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s largest moon than any other in more than two decades, offering dramatic glimpses of the icy orb.
The first two images from NASA Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of Jupiter’s giant moon Ganymede have been received on Earth. The photos – one from the Jupiter orbiter’s JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera – show the surface in remarkable detail, including craters, clearly distinct dark and bright terrain, and long structural features possibly linked to tectonic faults.
This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
“This is the closest any spacecraft has come to this mammoth moon in a generation,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We are going to take our time before we draw any scientific conclusions, but until then we can simply marvel at this celestial wonder.”
Find out where Juno is at this moment with NASA’s interactive Eyes on the Solar System. With three giant blades stretching out some 66 feet (20 meters) from its cylindrical, six-sided body, the Juno spacecraft is a dynamic engineering marvel, spinning to keep itself stable as it makes oval-shaped orbits around Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Juno detects ‘Sprites’ and ‘Elves’
All about Ganymede
Using its green filter, the spacecraft’s JunoCam visible-light imager captured almost an entire side of the water-ice-encrusted moon. Later, when versions of the same image come down incorporating the camera’s red and blue filters, imaging experts will be able to provide a color portrait of Ganymede. Image resolution is about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel.
In addition, Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit, a navigation camera that keeps the spacecraft on course, provided a black-and-white picture of Ganymede’s dark side (the side opposite the Sun) bathed in dim light scattered off Jupiter. Image resolution is between 0.37 to 0.56 miles (600 to 900 meters) per pixel.
This image of the dark side of Ganymede was obtained by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit navigation camera during its June 7, 2021, flyby of the moon. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
“The conditions in which we collected the dark side image of Ganymede were ideal for a low-light camera like our Stellar Reference Unit,” said Heidi Becker, Juno’s radiation monitoring lead at JPL. “So this is a different part of the surface than seen by JunoCam in direct sunlight. It will be fun to see what the two teams can piece together.”
The spacecraft will send more images from its Ganymede flyby in the coming days, with JunoCam’s raw images being made available here.
The solar-powered spacecraft’s encounter with the Jovian moon is expected to yield insights into its composition, ionosphere, magnetosphere, and ice shell while also providing measurements of the radiation environment that will benefit future missions to the Jovian system.
More About the Mission
JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
More information about Juno is available at:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu
What verb is best?
Glided, zoomed, coasted
The space craft is, at this point, not using powered flight.
I don’t know.
Anyone living there would soon learn to listen to the yell of “incoming”
Cruised past...
Darted
Swept
Sped
Drifted
Pushed
Moved
Locomoted
This solar system was really bombarded in the past. Fragments making 40++ mile wide craters on most of the planets, moons etc. Craters in craters on the lunar surface. Even this planet has taken a hell of a beating.
I prefer a simple color shot for observation purposes.
ROUND
Isn’t it amazing? Good thing that most of that detritus was collected and swept up before people got here.
Looks like trail bikers like it a lot.
At 70 miles, I think you would have been incinerated. At 700 miles, you probably would have felt a lot of heat and maybe the shock wave.
One definition is “ To move along or progress smoothly or effortlessly”. You often hear the phrase “The ball sailed out of bounds”. I think that is a good use of the word.
p
if you click the image to enlarge, you can see the corn fields and subdivisions like Levittown.
I’m glad I wasn’t there. ☺
One of the largest craters in our Solar System is on the Moon weighing in at about 1,500 miles in diameter and 8 miles deep.
According to recent reports it may contain an enormous chunk of metal allegedly larger than Hawaii’s Big Island.
#6. Let’s add the cowboy term “motsied” pass Ganymede. Not in a hurry. This moon isn’t going anywhere soon.
the ‘dark’ side looks almost as bright as the sun-side. And there’s an ocean under a 500-mile deep ice pack? I wonder what sound the moon makes. (i love space stuff)
I used to be in my very early youth an enthusiastic amateur astronomer. Once I understood the vastness of space I was very depressed and so very much disappointed. I realized then that I would never be able to actually go and see these distant places. I have hope, it ain’t going to happen in my lifetime, that one day travel to these distant places can be realized. I have faith humanity isn’t going to be stuck on our blue-green orb forever.
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