Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa Looks Bonkers in This NASA Close-Up
Juno just keeps on giving. NASA’s Jupiter-studying spacecraft snuggled up to the gas giant’s imagination moon Europa last week and the images are still arriving. The latest is a super close-up view of the moon’s surface showing what NASA describes as “a puzzling region of the moon’s heavily fractured icy crust.”
our first views from the Sept. 29 flybys came in last week, showing some fetching JunoCam looks at Europa’s complex surface. The new image comes from a different camera called the Stellar Reference Unit. Its main job is to help orient Juno, but in this case it captured a stunning view of Europa covering an area of about 93 miles (150 kilometers) by 125 miles (200 kilometers).
Surface features like grooves and double ridges (elevated areas marked by parallel lines) stand out in the black-and-white view. The area is seen at night lit by reflected sunlight from Jupiter. Juno was just 256 miles (412 kilometers) above the surface when SRU snapped the image.
“The team’s use of a star-tracker camera for science is a great example of Juno’s groundbreaking capabilities,” SRU lead co-investigator Heidi Becker said in a NASA statement. These features are so imaginative. Understanding how they formed — and how they connect to Europa’s history — informs us about the internal and external processes shaping the icy crust.”
Jaw-dropping Jupiter: NASA’s Juno mission eyes the gas giant
See all photos
NASA pointed out