This new image of Jupiter’s moon Europa, captured during NASA’s Juno spacecraft’s closest approach on September 29, 2022, shows a region near the icy moon’s equator called Annwn Regio.
This look at the complex, ice-covered surface of Europa came from Juno during a close pass on September 29, 2022. The spacecraft had only a two-hour window to collect it, racing past the moon with a relative velocity of about 23.6 km per second (14.7 miles per second). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / MSSS.
NASA’s Juno robotic orbiter performed a close flyby of Europa on September 29 at 5:36 a.m. EDT (2:36 a.m. PDT).
At closest approach, the spacecraft came within a distance of about 352 km (219 miles).
This is only the third close pass in history below 500 km (310 miles) altitude and the closest look any spacecraft has provided at Europa since January 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft came within 351 km (218 miles) of the surface.
“It’s very early in the process, but by all indications Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success,” said Juno principal investigator Dr. Scott Bolton, a researcher at Southwest Research Institute.
“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.”
Taken by the JunoCam instrument, the image zooms in on a swath of Europa’s surface north of the equator.
Due to the enhanced contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator, rugged terrain features are easily seen, including tall shadow-casting blocks, while bright and dark ridges and troughs curve across the surface. The oblong pit near the terminator might be a degraded impact crater.
During the flyby, Juno also obtained valuable 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 Juno co-investigator Dr. Candy Hansen, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute.
“The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area.”
The September 29 flyby modified Juno’s trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days.
The flyby also marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during Juno’s extended mission.
The mission explored Ganymede in June 2021 and is scheduled to make close flybys of Io, the most volcanic body in the Solar System, in 2023 and 2024.
