Juno flies past Jupiter's icy moon Europa in 1st spacecraft visit since 2000

Juno is primarily designed to study the interior of Jupiter, but the spacecraft's full suite of instruments and sensors will be online to gather as much information about Europa as possible. And the flyby could lead to new insights into the unseen depths of Europa. Europa's global ocean means the moon is considered a prime candidate for searching for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

"What will be really interesting for deepening our knowledge is the determination of any signal that is related to determining the characteristics of the ocean," Blanc said. Juno's magnetometer and radio wave experiment will probe Europa's internal structure via the moon's gravity fields."So even with one pass, by combining magnetic and gravimetric data, you can improve concepts on determining characteristics of an ocean, especially with a close, 300-kilometer [190 miles] altitude pass," he added.

Juno will also measure plasma in the moon's wake as Juno explores Europa's interaction with Jupiter's magnetosphere, and the spacecraft will look for ultraviolet emissions from Europa's tenuous atmosphere when flying over its night side. The flyby is part of extended mission objectives approved in 2021. Juno launched in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in 2016. Juno is in a highly elliptical orbit around Jupiter's poles, making a close approach and then heading far away from the giant planet, with each orbit early on in the mission taking around 53 days.

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