NASA probe reaches Europa, the moon of Jupiter that could harbor life

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has flown over Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and has sent back its first image during its closest approach, 352 kilometers from the surface of said satellite.

Europa is one of the celestial bodies of the solar system with many possibilities of harboring life. A salty ocean up to 150 km deep is believed to exist beneath an ice crust that is between 15 and 25 km thick.

It’s not the only candidate in our neighborhood, though: Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has recently been found to contain all six of the elements necessary for life.

The postcard, taken on September 29, reveals surface features of a region near the equator called Annwn. This is the closest picture of this moon since the one taken by NASA‘s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s.

The image is a close-up of a strip of the surface north of its equator, and due to the contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator (the line of separation from the night side), you can see terrain features easily.

It is a steep area, with tall blocks that cast their shadows, while light and dark ridges and depressions curve along the surface, describes the US space agency in a statement.

During the flyby, the mission obtained what will be some of the highest resolution images of the moon (1 km per pixel) and valuable data on the structure of the ice sheet, its interior, its surface composition and its ionosphere, in addition to interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

Juno only had two hours to collect data from Europa, through which it passed at a relative speed of about 23.6 km/s and, although it is still “very early”, everything indicates that the flyby “was a great success”, according to Scott. Bolton, principal investigator for the mission at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

The new data provided by Juno on the geology of Europa will be used for future missions to this moon of Jupiter, such as europe clipper scheduled for 2024, which will study its atmosphere, surface and interior to determine if there are places below the surface that could harbor life.

With information from EFE

Source-larepublica.pe