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NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew close to Jupiter’s moon Europa in 2022, looking for possible signs of recent surface activity, Space.com reports.
Using the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), Juno’s onboard positioning star camera, the spacecraft captured a high-resolution image of Europa’s surface as it was illuminated by Jupiter’s sunlight.
The image of the flyby captured by the SRU is a JGR planets was published in an article published in the magazine on December 22, 2023. In the picture, the ice surface is arranged in a strange shape, 67 kilometers long and 37 kilometers wide, which most closely resembles a platypus, with its “body” in the north and its “beak” in the south.
Both areas contain large blocks of ice, each about 1 km in size, and cast shadows. The photos taken of this formation were compared with images of similar resolution from NASA’s previous Galileo spacecraft, which examined Jupiter between 1995 and 2003.
The comparison shows that changes may have occurred in the southern part since Galileo’s writings.
According to the researchers, the 2022 image could also contain deposits that could be related to groundwater on Europa. However, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) says the evidence is inconclusive, largely due to differences in the quality of the images and the conditions under which they were taken.
In April 2023, NASA launched JUICE, a spacecraft headed to Jupiter that will arrive on the planet in December 2031. The Europa Clipper will launch on October 6 this year on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Space probes could confirm Europa’s current surface activity.
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