Image: Ganymede JunoGill 2217
Description: Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The cause of the grooved terrain remains a topic of research, with a leading hypothesis relating it to shifting iced plates. Ganymede is though to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth -- and might contain life. Like Earth's Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter. The featured image was captured last week by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft as it passed only about 1000 kilometers above the immense moon. The close pass reduced Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53 days to 43 days. Juno continues to study the giant planet's high gravity, unusual magnetic field, and complex cloud structures.
Title: Ganymede JunoGill 2217
Credit: https://science.nasa.gov/ganymede-juno / http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210614.html
Author: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; processing by Kevin M. Gill
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No
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