June 9, 2021 10:05:13 am
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has offered the primary close-up of Jupiter’s largest moon in 20 years.
Juno crossed icy Ganymede on Monday, passing inside 645 miles (1,038 kilometers). The final time a spacecraft arrived was in 2000 when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft handed the most important moon in our photo voltaic system.
NASA launched the primary two photographs of Juno on Tuesday, exhibiting Ganymede’s crater and lengthy, slim options presumably associated to tectonic faults. One exhibits the far aspect of the Moon, reverse the Sun.
“This is the closest spacecraft to this giant moon in a generation,” mentioned Juno’s lead scientist, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We’re going to take our time before drawing any scientific conclusions, but until then we can marvel at this astronomical wonder – the only moon larger than the planet Mercury in our solar system.”
The darkish aspect of the Jovian moon Ganymede because the Juno spacecraft flies by. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI by way of AP)
Ganymede is one in all 79 identified moons round Jupiter, a fuel large. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei found Ganymede, together with Jupiter’s three largest moons, in 1610.
Launched a decade in the past, Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for 5 years.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
