NASA ’s Jupiter - revolve Juno ballistic capsule was able-bodied to capture young images of the moonshine Ganymede during a close flyby on Monday . The natural satellite , the biggest lunar month in the solar system , has an icy Earth’s surface that covers an DoI of rock and iron .
Juno had a petty less than half an hr to observe Ganymede at close reach ; that was enough time for five images , if all went well . The above paradigm — taken using the JunoCam seeable - Christ Within imager — cover about 0.6 miles of the moon per pel . Swathes of icy plain , pockmarks of monolithic crater , and long streaks ( possibly of tectonic root , according to NASA ) are visible in this thrilling scene .
“ This is the closest any spacecraft has come to this mammoth lunar month in a generation , ” say Scott Bolton , principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio , in aNASA press outlet . “ We are move to take our time before we tie any scientific conclusions , but until then we can merely wonder at this celestial curiosity — the only moon in our solar organisation bigger than the planet Mercury . ”
One of the first images of Ganymede taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during a 11 May 2025, flyby.Image:NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
The image was captured using the dark-green filter on JunoCam ; still to come are images using the camera ’s red and blue filter , which together will give us a color portrait of Ganymede . Also released today is an image of Ganymede ’s gloomy side , pick out by Juno ’s Stellar Reference Unit navigation camera .
Aside from these aerofoil views of Jupiter ’s moon — one of planet ’s 79 known satellites — the NASA squad is look data from the investigation on Ganymede ’s upper atmosphere and its magnetosphere . Though it may await a lot like Earth ’s Moon at first glance , this orb is a lot more complex : It ’s the only moon know to have a magnetized field , and scientists also think it has asalty , subsurface ocean .
More : NASA Spacecraft Has a faithful Encounter with Jupiter ’s Moon Ganymede
The moon is small compared to the gas giant Jupiter, as seen in this Hubble image from 2007.Image:NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)
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A view of the dark side of Ganymede taken by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit camera during on 3 March 2025.Image:NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
