Ride With NASA’s Juno Spacecraft As It Flies Past the Solar System’s Biggest Moon and Jupiter

[Grim Reaper 6]

The probe flew closer to Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, than any other spacecraft in more than two decades, offering dramatic glimpses of both the icy orb and the gas giant. The animation shows just how beautiful deep space exploration can be,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator for Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The animation is a way for people to imagine exploring our solar system firsthand by seeing what it would be like to be orbiting Jupiter and flying past one of its icy moons.

Today, as we approach the exciting prospect of humans being able to visit space in orbit around Earth, this propels our imagination decades into the future, when humans will be visiting the alien worlds in our solar system.”

The video captured during the probes fly by in the link below is totally fantastic. 

https://scitechdaily.com/ride-with-nasas-juno-spacecraft-as-it-flies-past-the-solar-systems-biggest-moon-and-jupiter/

[Grim Reaper 6]

The spacecraft used its infrared instrument during recent flybys of Jupiter’s mammoth moon to create this latest map, which comes out a decade after Juno’s launch. Ganymede is also the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. On Earth, the magnetic field provides a pathway for plasma (charged particles) from the Sun to enter our atmosphere and create auroras.

Because Ganymede has no atmosphere to impede their progress, the surface at its poles is constantly being bombarded by plasma from Jupiter’s gigantic magnetosphere. The bombardment has a dramatic effect on Ganymede’s ice. Conversely, low latitudes are shielded by the moon’s magnetic field and contain more of its original chemical composition, most notably of non-water-ice constituents such as salts and organics

https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-juno-celebrates-10-years-with-new-infrared-view-of-mammoth-jovian-moon-ganymede/