NASA is about to go to Ganymede for the first time in two decades SPACE GanymedeMaps of Ganymede created with facts from the Voyager and Galileo spacecraftNASA’s Juno probe will nowadays dive low over Jupiter’s greatest moon Ganymede, supplying the first up-close views of its icy floor in over two decades.At its closest, Juno’s will fly roughly a thousand kilometre’s above Ganymede’s frozen globe. The moon, which at 5260 kilometres broad is large than the planet Mercury, used to be beforehand explored in element by using NASA’s Galileo spacecraft round the flip of the millennium and the Voyager missions in the late 1970s.This trendy go to will additionally see the probe collect a trove of precious scientific data, inclusive of measurements of the moon’s magnetic area and its mottled crust, which is made of water ice.JunoCam ought to be in a position to snap pics of Ganymede with a decision of about one to two kilometres. That degree of element may additionally supply researchers a threat to study if any areas on the moon have been altered – with the aid of activities such as asteroid affects – considering that our ultimate clear view.“Both Galileo and Voyager imaged Ganymede, and it simply turns out that the component of the floor we will be imaging used to be first-rate mapped via Voyager, which of direction offers us an even longer time base for changes,” explains Hansen.The Juno spacecraft itself is simply a month or so away from the stop of its essential mission, however previously this yr NASA prolonged the probe’s time surveying the massive of our photo voltaic system. It will go on analyzing Jupiter and its storm-flecked ecosystem till 2025 and will make similarly visits to some of the planet’s greatest moons with shut swings previous Europa subsequent 12 months and Io in 2023.
