NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a wonderful picture of the two moons of the planet Jupiter, you also see

NASA’s Juno mission recently orbited the planet Jupiter for the 39th time and took an amazing picture of the southern hemisphere of the planet. However, a closer look at the picture also shows two more nearby objects, which are Jupiter’s moons Io and Europa. Juno passed close to the planet in mid-January this year, but NASA shared this picture last week. At the time this photo was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 61,000 kilometers from Jupiter’s cloud tops, and at a latitude of about 52 degrees south. It sent raw data to the ground control center, and citizen scientist Andrea Luck used that data to create a picture.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has 53 named moons and another 26 have yet to receive official names. The stony Moon is volcanic in the Solar System, but beneath Europa’s icy surface lies an ocean of liquid water. Juno will take a closer and more detailed look at Europa in September this year, when it will pass by it decades later.

NASA has said that the Juno probe will reach Io in late 2023 and early 2024. NASA has provided raw images captured by JunoCam so that citizen scientists like Luck can understand and process the data in the image product.

Io is the third largest of Jupiter’s moons and the fifth in distance from the planet and is slightly larger than Earth’s moon. Europa, on the other hand, is the most promising body with an Earth-like atmosphere to support life. Scientists believe that it has hidden an ocean of salt water beneath its icy surface. That ocean may contain twice as much water as Earth’s oceans.

NASA launched the Juno spacecraft on August 5, 2011, on a 5-year journey to Jupiter. After traveling 1.7 billion miles, it reached the planet on July 4, 2016.<!–

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