NASA's Juno beams 1st picture from Europa flyby; closest by a spacecraft in over 22 years

NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter’s Moon Europa on September 29 and it has been labelled as a “great success”. The spacecraft buzzed over Europa’s surface at 3:06 pm IST and took multiple high-resolution images which will be released over the next few days. For now, NASA has released a picture featuring a region near the moon’s equator called Annwn Regio which was photographed when Juno was 352 km above the surface. 

Check out Juno's closest views of Europa

NASA says that this was only the third fly-by below an altitude of 500 km and the previous one was 22 years ago when the Galileo probe skimmed over the surface from a distance of 351 km. The first image was taken using the JunoCam and it showcases an area of Europa’s surface north of the equator. The dark contrast between the night and the day side is clearly highlighting the rugged terrain with ridges and a pit that scientists suspect is a degraded impact crater. 

(Europa photographed using JunoCam; Image: NASA)

Interestingly, the picture above as well as those soon to be released, were taken during a two-hour window as Juno raced above the surface at a speed of 23.6 km per second. “It’s very early in the process, but by all indications, Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success”, Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator said in a statement. “This first picture is just a glimpse of the remarkable new science to come from Juno’s entire suite of instruments and sensors that acquired data as we skimmed over the moon’s icy crust,” he added. 

The reason why Juno’s fly-by is significant is that the data collected by the spacecraft would be useful in NASA’s Europa Clipper mission which is targeted for launch in 2024. The spacecraft will be sent to Europa which is the sixth largest Moon of Jupiter and is suspected to house a vast salty ocean having potential conditions for life. 

During its flyby, Juno collected data on Europa’s ice shell structure, interior, surface composition, and ionosphere, in addition to the moon’s interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere. “The science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa’s surface features have changed over the past two decades,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator.