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NASA's Juno to make closest flyby to Jupiter's largest Moon in 20 years, on June 7
NASA's Juno spacecraft will come within 645 miles (1,038 kilometres) of the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede on June 7, the US space agency said on Friday.
The solar-powered Juno spacecraft will fly past Ganymede at 1:35 pm EDT (10:35 am PDT). The flyby will be the closest-known since NASA's Galileo spacecraft made its penultimate close approach back on May 20, 2000.
Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetosphere -- a bubble-shaped region of charged particles surrounding the celestial body.
"Things usually happen pretty quick in the world of flybys, and we have two back-to-back next week. So literally every second counts," said Juno Mission Manager Matt Johnson of JPL.
"On Monday, we are going to race past Ganymede at almost 12 miles per second (19 kilometres per second). Less than 24 hours later we're performing our 33rd science pass of Jupiter -- screaming low over the cloud tops, at about 36 miles per second (58 kilometres per second). It is going to be a wild ride," he added. IANS
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Just a reminder, we still out there, lol
