Extract from ABC News
NASA's Juno spacecraft has provided the first close-ups of Jupiter's largest moon in two decades.
Key points:
- It's the first time a spacecraft has been close to the moon since 2000
- One of the new pictures shows the moon's far side
- Ganymede is one of 79 known moons around Jupiter
Juno zoomed past icy Ganymede on Monday, passing within 1,038 kilometres, but it took time for the first images to be received on Earth.
The last time a spacecraft came that close was in 2000 when NASA's Galileo spacecraft swept past our solar system's biggest moon.
NASA has released Juno's first two
pictures, highlighting Ganymede's craters and long, narrow features
possibly related to tectonic faults.
One shows the moon's far side, opposite the sun.
The final image will stitch together red-and-blue filtered images to show more detail on the actual colour of the moon.
"This is the closest any spacecraft has come to this mammoth moon in a generation," said Juno's lead scientist, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
NASA said it expected to get more information on the moon's composition, ionosphere, magnetosphere, and ice shell.
Ganymede is one of 79 known moons around Jupiter, a gas giant. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered Ganymede in 1610, along with Jupiter's three next-biggest moons.
It's also the largest moon in our solar system, and the only one with its own magnetic field.
Its subterranean ocean is thought to have more water than all the water on Earth's surface.
Launched a decade ago, Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for five years.
AP/ABC
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