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Europa Coming Closer

Oct. 28, 2021
NASA's Juno spacecraft made a distant encounter with Jupiter's moon Europa on its 37th close pass by Jupiter. This image from the spacecraft's JunoCam was taken at a distance of about 51,000 miles (82,000 kilometers).

NASA's Juno spacecraft made a distant encounter with Jupiter's moon Europa on its 37th close pass by Jupiter. This image from the spacecraft's JunoCam was taken at a distance of about 51,000 miles (82,000 kilometers). Color and reflectance variations across Europa's regions can be seen in this JunoCam image. Although the resolution of the images is just 50 to 60 km per pixel, the data fills in a previously un-imaged area around the north pole near the center of the image.

As Juno's orbit evolves, it is crossing the orbits of the Galilean moons. The next encounter with Europa will take place in February 2022, at a distance of about 29,000 miles (47,000 km). In late September 2022, Juno will swoop to just 221 miles (355 kilometers) above Europa's surface.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.

More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu.

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