The first pictures from Juno's flyby of Europa on Sept 29th have arrived on Earth, and they are beautiful. At closest approach, the spacecraft was only 219 miles (352 km) above the ocean moon's icy crust, revealing cryovolcanic ridges, strangely curvaceous fractures, and frozen "rafts."
Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Navaneeth Krishnan S
This is only the third close pass in history below 310 miles (500 kilometers) altitude and the closest look at Europa any spacecraft has gotten since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) of the surface.
At closest approach, Juno was directly above a region of chaos terrain called "Annwn Regio" where rafts of ice had previously broken free and re-frozen. Researchers suspect that water from beneath Annwn Regio must be breaking through from time to time. Researchers will be looking carefully at these images to see if anything has changed since Galileo visited 20+ years ago.
www.spaceweather.com
At closest approach, Juno was directly above a region of chaos terrain called "Annwn Regio" where rafts of ice had previously broken free and re-frozen. Researchers suspect that water from beneath Annwn Regio must be breaking through from time to time. Researchers will be looking carefully at these images to see if anything has changed since Galileo visited 20+ years ago.
www.spaceweather.com
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