#galileo spacecraft

[spacewonder19]

Blood-red Scars & Veins on Europa ©

[notllorstel]

[siryl]

"Galileo Inbound" by David Metlesits.

[larimar]

nasa

That’s not a giant bath bomb, it’s our Moon!

We usually see Earth’s Moon in shades of grey, but here in this composite photo made from images captured by our Galileo spacecraft, it’s a riot of reds, oranges, and blues. And sure, it’s pretty, but that’s not the (only) reason we colour images.

The unusual colours in this photograph help scientists study what the Moon’s soil is made of. Areas appearing red generally correspond to the lunar highlands, while blue to orange shades indicate the ancient volcanic lava flow of a mare, or lunar sea. Bluer mare areas contain more titanium than the orange regions do. The deep blue patch on the right is Mare Tranquillitatis, and it’s richer in titanium than Mare Serenitatis, a slightly smaller circular area to the upper left of Mare Tranquillitatis. Finally, the small purple areas found near the centre are deposits formed by explosive volcanic eruptions.

The solid-state imaging system on Galileo captured 15 images of the Moon through three-colour filters while the spacecraft passed through the Earth-Moon system on Dec. 8, 1992. When this view was obtained, the spacecraft was 262,000 miles (425,000 kilometres) from the Moon and 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometres) from Earth. Galileo continued on to its main mission: studying Jupiter. It orbited the planet for almost eight years, made close passes by all the planet's major moons, and ended its mission by intentionally crashing into Jupiter on Sept. 21, 2003.

While this image won’t give you a luxurious bubble bath, meditating on all its colours can be just as relaxing.

Image description: The Moon is awash in shades of red, blue, and orange. The top portion is orange, while the bottom is red, and the middle is blue. The edges of each area are jagged, and some coloured portions surround others. There is a very vibrant blue area right of centre. The very bottom part of the Moon is missing from this composite image.

Credit: NASA/JPL

[jackiebranc]

NASA’s Juno spacecraft camera images processing

Learn more on the Mission Juno websites:  https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu / https://science.nasa.gov/mission/juno

Credit : NASA / JPL-Caltech /SwRI / MSSS / Jackie Branc

[to-the-sun-with-love]

I collect the final messages of abandoned spacecraft we’ve sent to other celestial bodies, as if they were last words and epitaphs.

I think I’m trying to say, I love you. I will remember you. I will not abandon the memory of you.

I’m trying to say, your existence was necessary, and I am glad for it.

I have days where I think, what will my own last words be?

What will be their legacy? Will somebody care for them? Will somebody tend to them? Shower upon them the kindness of remembrance?

Will I just become a ‘the end’ screen projected onto an unmarked tombstone?

Will I just be a eulogy that ends with good riddance?

[the-cosmic-creature]

final for my 2D Design class. Very proud of this one🔭🛰️🪐

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[spacenutspod]

Join us for SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 81, where we delve into the latest discoveries and advancements in space exploration.First, new observations from NASA's Juno spacecraft reveal that Jupiter's volcanic moon Io is covered in lakes of molten lava. These findings, published in Communications Earth and Environments, provide a fuller picture of Io's extensive volcanic activity and offer new insights into the volcanic processes at work on this ancient, violent world. Io, slightly larger than Earth's moon, is the most volcanically active world in our solar system due to the gravitational forces from its neighboring Jovian moons and Jupiter itself. Juno's recent flybys have captured high-resolution infrared images showing bright rings surrounding numerous hotspots, indicating that much of Io's surface is covered in lava lakes with caldera-like features.Next, NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has crossed an ancient Martian riverbed in the Jezero Crater, reaching the Bright Angel geological site earlier than expected. This route provided a treasure trove of geological features, including rocks with diverse textures and compositions. Perseverance's exploration of this ancient river channel offers new clues about Mars' geological history and the processes that shaped its surface.Finally, we examine whether space tourism is healthy. New research published in the Journal of the Frontiers of Physiology warns that wealthy, unhealthy individuals venturing into space may face increased health risks, such as pulmonary edema, due to the effects of microgravity on the heart. The study suggests that future space tourists might need to send a digital twin of themselves into virtual space to test their bodies' responses before embarking on the real journey. July Skywatch: What to look for in the night skies throughtout the the month of July with Sky & Telescopes Jonathan Nally. Follow our cosmic conversations on X @stuartgary, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of the universe, one episode at a time. Sponsor Offer This episode is proudly supported by NordVPN. Secure your digital journey across the cosmos with a VPN service you can trust. Find your stellar security solution at https://www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. Listen to SpaceTime on your favorite podcast app including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Support SpaceTime Become a supporter of SpaceTime: https://www.bitesz.com/show/spacetime/support/ www.bitesz.com

[mindblowingscience]

More pocked with craters than any other object in our solar system, Jupiter's outermost and second-biggest Galilean moon, Callisto, appears geologically unremarkable. In the 1990s, however, NASA's Galileo spacecraft captured magnetic measurements near Callisto that suggested that its ice shell surface—much like that of Europa, another moon of Jupiter—may encase a salty, liquid water ocean. But evidence for Callisto's subsurface ocean has remained inconclusive, as the moon has an intense ionosphere. Scientists thought this electrically conductive upper part of the moon's atmosphere might imitate the magnetic fingerprint of a salty, conductive ocean. Now, researchers have revisited the Galileo data in more detail. Unlike in prior studies, this team incorporated all available magnetic measurements from Galileo's eight close flybys of Callisto. Their expanded analysis much more strongly suggests that Callisto hosts a subsurface ocean. The paper is published in the journal AGU Advances.

Continue Reading.

[hungwy]

Some facts about my birthday (October 29):

1390: First trials of witchcraft in Paris

1618: Walter Raleigh, colonialist statesman, soldier, and explorer, is tried for treason and executed

1682: The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, lands at what is now Chester, PA

1740: James Boswell, diarist and biographer, is born

1863: The International Red Cross is formed in Geneva

1882: Jean Giradoux, playwright and novelist, is born

1888: The Convention of Constantinople allows for free maritime passage through the Suez Canal; Li Dazhao, co-founder of the CCP and mentor of Mao, is born

1889: N.G. Chernyshevksy, author of "What is to be done?", dies

1897: Joseph Goebbels, the nazi, is born

1901: Leon Czogolsz, anarchist, is executed for the assassination of William McKinley

1910: A.J. Ayer, logical positivist, is born

1914: The Ottomans enter WWI

1923: The Ottoman Empire dissolves; Turkey becomes a republic through the efforts of Atatürk

1924: Zbigniew Herbert, poet, is born

1929: Black Tuesday, the crash of the New York Stock Exchange and the beginning of the Great Depression

1938: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Rhodesia, is born; Ralph Bakshi, animator, is born

1940: The US begins its first peacetime military draft

1948: Franz de Waal, ethologist, is born

1949: George Gurdjieff, philosopher and mystic, dies

1956: The Suez Crisis begins

1962: The Beach Boys release "Surfin' Safari"

1967: Musical "Hair" opens off Broadway

1969: The first computer-computer link established on ARPANET

1971: Ma Huateng, co-founder of Tencent, is born; Winona Ryder, actor, is born

1975: Franco's 36-year long leadership of Spain ends

1985: Evgeny Lifshitz, physicist, dies

1991: The spacecraft Galileo makes the first ever visit to an asteroid

1995: Terry Southern, screenwriter of Dr. Strangelove, dies

2004: Al-Jazeera broadcasts Osama Bin Laden taking responsibility for 9/11; European Union leaders sign the first EU constitution

It is the Christian feast day of:

Abraham of Rostov

Blessed Chiara Badano

Colman mac Duagh

The Duai Martyrs

Gaetano Erico

Michele Rua

Narcissus of Jerusalem

Theuderius

It is a public holiday in:

Cambodia (Coronation Day)

Turkey (Republic Day)

It is a private holiday in:

USA (National Cat Day)

Everywhere (my birthday)

[mysticstronomy]

CAN HUMANS LIVE ON JUPITER'S MOON, EUROPA??

Blog#442

Saturday, October 5th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Life is abundant on Earth, but we haven’t yet found it anywhere else in the universe. How do we search for life beyond our home planet? Scientists say we should look for three key ingredients that make life possible: liquid water, chemistry, and energy. Also, life takes time to develop. We should look for life on worlds where sufficient time has passed for life to get started.

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may have these essential ingredients and is as old as Earth. NASA is sending the Europa Clipper spacecraft to conduct a detailed exploration of Europa and investigate whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the capability to support life. Understanding Europa’s habitability will help scientists better understand the potential for finding life beyond our planet and guide us in our search.

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe.

This multidisciplinary field investigates the extremes of life on Earth to inform its search for life in the universe. It encompasses characterizing habitable environments in preparation to search for life.

Liquid water tops the list of ingredients for life, and Europa has lots of it. Scientists think Europa has a salty ocean beneath its icy crust with about twice as much water than all of Earth's oceans combined. Water dissolves nutrients for organisms to eat, transports important chemicals within living cells, supports metabolism, and allows those cells to get rid of waste. Scientists are confident there's a rocky seafloor at the bottom of Europa’s ocean.

Hydrothermal activity could possibly supply chemical nutrients that could support living organisms.

The best evidence that there's an ocean at Europa was gathered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. While Europa has no magnetic field of its own, when the Galileo spacecraft made 12 close flybys of Europa, its magnetometer detected a magnetic field within Europa as Jupiter's powerful magnetic field swept past the moon. Scientists think the most likely cause of this magnetic signature is a global ocean of salty water.

Europa's bright, icy surface is unlike anything seen on Earth. It’s the smoothest body in the solar system, with few towering mountains or deep basins. Ridges and grooves crisscross the surface, breaking up the landscape. Many of these features coincide with long, curving streaks that are dark and reddish in color – some stretching across the surface in great arcs over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) long. Elsewhere, domes, pits, and jumbles of icy blocks hint that warm ice may be rising from deep below.

Along with water, life as we know it also needs certain chemical elements – the building blocks of life – including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. These elements are common in the universe and make up 98% of living matter on Earth by combining to form organic molecules essential to life.

Scientists think these elements were likely incorporated into Europa as the moon formed. Later, asteroids and comets collided with the moon and may have left more organic materials.

The third ingredient for life is energy. All lifeforms need energy to survive. On Earth, most of that energy comes from the Sun. For example, plants grow and thrive through photosynthesis, a process that converts sunlight into energy. The energy is transferred to humans, animals, and other organisms when the plants are eaten.

But the type of life that might inhabit Europa likely would be powered purely by chemical reactions instead of by photosynthesis, because any life at Europa would exist beneath the ice, where there is no sunlight.

Europa's surface is blasted by radiation from Jupiter. That's a bad thing for life on the surface – it couldn't survive. But the radiation may create fuel for life in an ocean below the surface.

The radiation splits apart water molecules (H2O, made of oxygen and hydrogen) in Europa's extremely tenuous atmosphere. The hydrogen floats away and much of the oxygen stays behind and may bind to other elements. Oxygen is a very reactive element, which means it could potentially be used in chemical reactions that release energy. If the oxygen somehow makes its way to the ocean, it could react with other chemicals to possibly provide chemical energy for microbial life.

Originally published on https://europa.nasa.gov

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, October 9th, 2024)

"WHAT IS 'NEGATIVE TIME'??"

[deltawebsistem]

NASA's Galileo spacecraft caught Jupiter's moon Io undergoing a volcanic eruption

[apod]

2024 March 29

Galileo's Europa Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SETI Institute, Cynthia Phillips, Marty Valenti

Explanation: Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon's icy surface likely hides a deep, global ocean. Galileo's Europa image data has been remastered here, with improved calibrations to produce a color image approximating what the human eye might see. Europa's long curving fractures hint at the subsurface liquid water. The tidal flexing the large moon experiences in its elliptical orbit around Jupiter supplies the energy to keep the ocean liquid. But more tantalizing is the possibility that even in the absence of sunlight that process could also supply the energy to support life, making Europa one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth. The Juno spacecraft currently in Jovian orbit has also made repeated flybys of the water world, returning images along with data exploring Europa's habitability. This October will see the launch of the NASA's Europa Clipper on a voyage of exploration. The spacecraft will make nearly 50 flybys, approaching to within 25 kilometers of Europa's icy surface.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240329.html

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Scientists identify unexpected variations in electrons connecting Jupiter with its moon Io

Using data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it flew past Jupiter's highly volcanic moon Io in late 2023 and again in early 2024, a Southwest Research Institute-led team identified electrons with energies enhanced by processes in the region connecting the moon to Jupiter's ionosphere, called an Alfvén wing. A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters emphasizes how these electrons, and their variation within that region, shape the plasma environment around Io.

"These electrons gain energy from the interaction between Io and Jupiter's magnetic field," said Dr. Robert Ebert, lead author of the paper. "These energized electrons then interact with Io's atmosphere and surface, ionizing and exciting atoms and molecules and even creating aurora."

In the 1990s, NASA's Galileo mission discovered the presence of intense electron beams within the Alfvén wing and other regions near Io. These electrons can travel along the local magnetic field and interact with Io's atmosphere. New results from Juno indicate that the electron properties within Io's Alfvén wing are not uniform. The number of electrons in these beams are largest at the boundaries of the wing and weaker inside, suggesting that their interaction with Io might also vary across the moon.

Juno's extended mission includes explorations of some of its many moons. This study focuses on plasma observations from the SwRI-led Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) as Juno flew by Io on Dec. 30, 2023, and Feb. 3, 2024.

"It is amazing to see that JADE was able to make new, high-resolution measurements in this region of Jupiter's harsh radiation environment," said Dr. Frederic Allegrini, JADE instrument lead and second author of the paper. "Any instrument or spacecraft would stop functioning after a short exposure time if it were to stay there rather than fly through it."

The Juno observations confirmed the continuous presence of electron beams in the Alfvén wing over Io's pole and their presence beyond the distance where Galileo explored. These beams travel along Jupiter's magnetic field, impacting Io or its atmosphere when on magnetic field lines that have one foot connected to Io.

"These spatially variable beams are more energized than electrons in the nearby Io torus, a donut-shaped cloud of electrically charged gas surrounding Jupiter," Ebert said. "Their location within and around the Alfvén wing must be considered when interpreting their impact on Io's atmosphere and nearby plasma environment."

The Juno mission is led by SwRI Associate Vice President Dr. Scott Bolton.

TOP IMAGE: Jupiter's moon Io (left side of image) is connected to Jupiter (right side of image) through the planet's magnetic field. Juno's close flyby of Io revealed electrons with varying properties in the region connecting these two solar system bodies. Credit: John Spencer, Southwest Reasearch Institute, and John Clarke, Boston University

LOWER IMAGE: (Top panels) X-Y projection of Juno's Io flyby prior to (a) PJ57 and (c) PJ58 in the IPhiO coordinate system. Overplotted along the trajectory is the electron differential energy flux summed from 200 eV–32 keV. Data above (below) the black trajectory line denotes electrons streaming toward (away from) Io. The magnitude of the integrated flux is represented by both the color and thickness of the symbols. The black flow streamlines are adapted from Saur et al. (1999). The gray circles offset from Io (top panels) represent modeled cross-sections of the Alfvén wing at Juno's location. (Bottom panels) Y-Z projection of Juno's Io flyby for (b) PJ57 and (d) PJ58. The purple regions represent the orientation of the magnetic field connected to Io at the time of the flybys. Credit: Geophysical Research Letters (2025). DOI: 10.1029/2024GL114183

[stellanix]

one stella to another i ask u kindly to post some of your favorite space pictures,,,, taps my fingers all gay

i have a lot so it's hard to pick ^^' but it's hard to go wrong with backlit saturn (from the cassini spacecraft)

another one i really like is this picture from the hope orbiter showing mars' moon deimos with the planet itself in the background :3

i also like pictures that may not look flashy (at least not at first glance) - and aren't shared around a ton because of that - but that nevertheless show really cool details in celestial bodies, like this picture from the galileo spacecraft of io in jupiter's shadow, gases around io ionized and glowing because of the radiation in jupiter's magnetosphere

though my favorite kind of space pictures are the super big high resolution ones where you can really zoom in and get lost in all the fine details for a good long while, like this mosaic of saturn's moon dione from the cassini spacecraft. there's so much rugged terrain, and craters cut in half by faults! it's so cool!!!