NASA Shares First Ever Images Of Jupiter's Moon Ganymede's North Pole Taken By Juno Spacecraft

For the first time ever, a man made spacecraft has been able to capture the images of the north pole of Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s 79 confirmed moons. The never-seen-before sight has been captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The gigantic moon can be seen in all its glory in a recent image by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The image shared via a NASA release shows a timeline of the moon reflecting the sun’s light from one half at all times.

Ganymede

For those unaware, Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter as well as the solar system. It is also the largest celestial body without a substantial atmosphere in the solar system. If we include the planets in comparison, Ganymede is the ninth-largest object in the Solar System.

Infrared mapping of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon through JIRAM instrument aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft. (Image: NASA)

Ganymede primarily consists of water ice and this composition of the moon possesses major clues for understanding the evolution of the 79 Jovian moons since their birth.

As per NASA, Ganymede is also the only natural satellite in the solar system that has its own magnetic field. Since such magnetic fields attract plasma (charged particles from the Sun), the surface at Ganymede’s poles is constantly bombarded by plasma from Jupiter's gigantic magnetosphere. This bombardment has left the ice formations on Ganymede in a completely amorphous form.

NASA’s Juno Observes

Launched in August 2011, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, since 2016. The missions of the spacecraft was to “improve our understanding of the solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter,” as per NASA.

NASA Juno Spacecraft (Artist concept: NASA)

During its flyby of Jupiter on December 26, 2019, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew close to the north pole of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. It was then that these pictures were taken by the spacecraft using the equipment onboard.

The equipment included Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument for an infrared? imagery of the celestial object. With the flyby, Juno was able to capture the “first infrared mapping of the massive moon's northern frontier,” reads the recent NASA release.

Through the activity, Juno has enabled us to learn that “the ice at and surrounding Ganymede's north pole has been modified by the precipitation of plasma," highlighted Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome.