{"id":11220,"date":"2022-10-21T00:31:40","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T16:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-juno-spacecraft-captures-closest-views-of-europa-since-2000\/"},"modified":"2022-10-21T00:31:40","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T16:31:40","slug":"nasas-juno-spacecraft-captures-closest-views-of-europa-since-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-juno-spacecraft-captures-closest-views-of-europa-since-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft captures closest views of Europa since 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This view of Jovian moon Europa was created by processing an image JunoCam captured during Juno\u2019s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. Credit: Image data: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSSImage processing by Bj\u00f6rn J\u00f3nsson CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Continuing to gather bonus science data in an extended mission around Jupiter, NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft recorded sharp views of the icy moon Europa Sept. 29 as the solar-powered probe raced by at a relative velocity of nearly 53,000 mph (85,000 kilometers per hour).<\/p>\n

Juno\u2019s flyby of Europa was the closest visit of a spacecraft to Europa since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA\u2019s Galileo spacecraft flew 218 miles (351 kilometers) from the moon\u2019s icy surface. Juno\u2019s flyby Sept. 29 reached a distance of 218 miles from Europa.<\/p>\n

Europa, slightly smaller than Earth\u2019s moon, is covered in a global ice shell on top of an ocean of salty water that may be habitable. NASA is building the Europa Clipper spacecraft for launch in 2024 on a mission dedicated to studying Jupiter\u2019s icy moon, and to search for evidence that Europa harbors the ingredients for life.<\/p>\n

Europa Clipper will make nearly 50 flybys of Europa after reaching Jupiter in 2030, traveling as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from Europa\u2019s frozen crust. But the Juno spacecraft had just two hours to capture data Sept. 29.<\/p>\n

Juno was designed to collect data on Jupiter itself, focusing its science instruments on the giant planet\u2019s atmosphere, magnetic field, and internal structure. Juno was also the first spacecraft to image the poles of Jupiter after entering orbit around the planet on July 4, 2016. The robotic mission launched Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.<\/p>\n

NASA approved an extension of the Juno mission in early 2021, allowing the spacecraft \u2014 if it remains healthy \u2014 to continue its exploration around the solar system\u2019s largest planet through September 2025.<\/p>\n

Jupiter\u2019s asymmetric gravity field is gradually perturbing Juno\u2019s trajectory and pulling the closest point of the spacecraft\u2019s elongated orbit northward over time. The shift in Juno\u2019s orbit will allow the spacecraft to get a better view of Jupiter\u2019s North Pole, and also enables flybys of Ganymede, Europa, and Io, three of the planet\u2019s largest moons.<\/p>\n

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The JunoCam instrument on NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft captured this view of the terminator, or day-night transition, on Jupiter\u2019s moon Europa. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSS\/AndreaLuck \u00a9 CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Juno flew by Ganymede on June 7, 2021, and is on track for two encounters with the volcanic moon Io on Dec. 30, 2023, and Feb. 3, 2024.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft\u2019s orbit is growing shorter with each flyby. The pull of gravity from Ganymede shortened Juno\u2019s orbit from 53 to 43 days last year, and Europa\u2019s gravity tightened Juno\u2019s orbital period around Jupiter to 38 days.  The Io flybys in 2023 and 2024 will pull the Juno spacecraft into a smaller orbit with a period of 33 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cJuno started out completely focused on Jupiter,\u201d said Scott Bolton, Juno\u2019s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. \u201cThe team is really excited that during our extended mission, we expanded our investigation to include three of the four Galilean satellites and Jupiter\u2019s rings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this flyby of Europa, Juno has now seen close-ups of two of the most interesting moons of Jupiter, and their ice shell crusts look very different from each other. In 2023, Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, will join the club,\u201d Bolton said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Juno\u2019s nine scientific instruments include a microwave radiometer for atmospheric soundings, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers, particle detectors, a magnetometer, and a radio and plasma waves experiment. The Jupiter orbiter also carries a color camera known as JunoCam, which collects image data for processing and analysis by an army of citizen scientists around the world.<\/p>\n

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This illustration depicts NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft soaring over Jupiter\u2019s south pole. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JunoCam captured images of Europa doing the Sept. 29 flyby, while the spacecraft\u2019s other instruments were tuned to look for particles lofted from Europa in possible eruptions through fractures in the moon\u2019s global ice sheet. Signs of recurring eruptions from Europa were detected by the Hubble Space Telescope.<\/p>\n

Juno\u2019s microwave radiometer was expected to probe the thickness of Europa\u2019s global ice shell. And the spacecraft\u2019s spectrometers were to map concentrations of water ice, carbon dioxide and organic molecules across about 40 percent of Europa\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa\u2019s surface features have changed over the past two decades,\u201d said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator who leads planning for the JunoCam camera at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. \u201cThe JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This view of Jovian moon Europa was created by processing an image JunoCam captured during Juno\u2019s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. Credit: Image data: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSSImage processing by Bj\u00f6rn J\u00f3nsson CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Continuing to gather bonus science data in an extended mission around Jupiter, NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft recorded sharp views of the icy moon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}