The Juno spacecraft is expected to pass near Jupiter Ganymede’s moon at 68,400 km / h over the next few days to collect data.
The Juno spacecraft (NASA) will pass by the moon of Jupiter Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, on June 7. With a diameter of over 5,260 km, Ganymede is even larger than Mercury.
Juno has been observing Jupiter and its moons since July 2016. On its next approach to Ganymede, the spacecraft will arrive 1,038 km above the celestial surface. It is the first spacecraft to approach Ganymede for over 20 years. The most recent approach was taken by Galileo in May 2000.
The camera aboard Juno will take photos of Ganymede while other instruments can collect data to help scientists better understand the makeup of the moon, including its ice crust. “Juno is equipped with many sensitive instruments capable of observing Ganymede in unprecedented ways,” said Scott Bolton, an expert at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
Ganymede is named after a wine servant of the ancient Greek gods. It is not only the largest natural satellite in the solar system, but also the only moon with a magnetic field. This causes the aurora to appear around the north and south poles.
Ganymede has an iron core and is covered with a layer of rock, topped with a thick crust of ice. Under the surface of this moon may exist an ocean. Astronomers also detected traces of a diluted oxygen atmosphere in 1996 using the Hubble Space Telescope, but that atmosphere is too thin for life to exist. On the surface of Ganymede there are scattered light areas. They look like scars and show that this star was once strongly modified.
On June 7, Juno will use 3 cameras, including a navigation camera, to observe as much as possible, including the high-energy radiation around Ganymede. The approach will be very fast so there will not be time to take a lot of pictures. However, what was collected on this flight can be compared to the data Voyager and Galileo returned.
“On Monday, Juno will fly over Ganymede at about 68,400 km / h. Less than 24 hours later, the spacecraft will continue its 33rd approach to Jupiter, passing through the planet’s cloud tops at high speed. It will be a spectacular flight, ”said Matt Johnson, head of the Juno mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
