NASA's Juno probe has made the closest approach to Jupiter's alluring, icy moon Europa in more than 20 years.
On Thursday, Juno flew within 222 miles (357 kilometers) of Europa. Phys.org said that the moon allegedly has an ocean running beneath its thick, icy surface and may contain aquatic life.
NASA Juno Mission Completes Europa Flyby
Wall Street Journal said that the flyby of Europa by Juno lasted around five minutes as it zipped by at a speed of nearly 50,000 miles per hour.
The solar-powered ship approached from the moon's night side and moved into the day side before continuing toward Jupiter.
It has three 28-foot-long solar panels arranged around an 11.5-foot box-shaped structure.
"The relative velocity between spacecraft and moon will be 23.6 kilometers per second, so we are screaming by pretty fast," said John Bordi, Juno deputy mission manager at JPL, in a blog post.
Dr. Alessandro Mura, a planetary scientist and Juno co-investigator from the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome, predicted in the same WSJ report that Juno would have had little time to take more than five pictures with its onboard camera during the flyby.
The mission scientists on Earth are receiving the photographs from the spacecraft and will make them accessible to the public as soon as they are ready.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft observed the complex colors and structure of Jupiter’s clouds as it completed its 43rd close flyby of the giant planet on July 5, 2022. Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created these two images using raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the spacecraft. At the time the raw image was taken, Juno was about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 50 degrees. North is up. At that moment, the spacecraft was traveling at about 130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.
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The most recent observations will support NASA's 2024 launch of the Europa Clipper mission. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, launching next year, will also conduct near encounters.
To investigate how the moon's surface may have altered over the preceding 20 years, images of Europa captured during the flyby may be compared to images captured by earlier missions.
Since the Galileo mission's flyby in 2000, no NASA spacecraft has gone this near to Europa, which is approximately 90 percent the size of Earth's moon.
CNN said that the spacecraft will fly past Io in 2023 and 2024 after visiting Ganymede in 2021. Its current mission expiration date is 2025.
Additionally, the Europa maneuver will shorten Juno's orbit around Jupiter from 43 to 38 days.
About Icy Moon Europa
Ars Technica said Europa, which is covered in ice but is thought to contain a massive ocean beneath the surface due to the moon's heated core, has long piqued the interest of scientists. Planetary scientists believe that Europa's ocean contains more liquid water than is present on Earth.
Although the ice sheet is thought to be several kilometers thick, research from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests geysers may occasionally be blasted via breaches in this ice. This ocean is considered a possible repository for microbic life given the availability of water and heat.
The ocean that the moon presumably rests on top of is thought to be 40 to 100 miles (64 to 161 kilometers) deep.
The ice shell that makes up the moon's surface is between 10 and 15 miles (16 and 24 kilometers) thick.
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