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Europa / j ʊ ˈ r oʊ p ə / ⓘ, or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter.It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System.Europa was discovered independently by Simon Marius and Galileo Galilei and was named (by Marius) after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete ...
Europa orbits Jupiter at about 417,000 miles (671,000 kilometers) from the planet, which itself orbits the Sun at a distance of roughly 500 million miles (780 million kilometers), or 5.2 astronomical units (AU). One AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun. Light from the Sun takes about 45 minutes to reach Europa.
Europa is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 moons. It's the sixth-closest moon to the planet. Europa and Jupiter’s three other largest moons – Io, Ganymede, and Callisto – were the first moons discovered beyond Earth. They are called the Galilean moons after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who first observed them with a homemade ...
Spacecraft Status. Earth’s first mission to conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. NASA’s Europa Clipper will determine if this ocean world has environments suitable for life to exist.
Oct 5, 2022 · The highest-resolution photo NASA’s Juno mission has ever taken of a specific portion of Jupiter’s moon Europa reveals a detailed view of a puzzling region of the moon’s heavily fractured icy crust. The image covers about 93 miles (150 kilometers) by 125 miles (200 kilometers) of Europa’s surface, revealing a region crisscrossed with a ...
Jun 13, 2024 · Europa is one of Jupiter’s moons. Scientists believe that Europa is especially notable because it may have twice as much water as Earth, though it is so cold on Europa that water on the surface of this moon is frozen. This image of Jupiter's beautiful moon Europa was taken by the Galileo Orbiter spacecraft in 1998.
In Greek mythology, Europa was a mortal who became a princess of Crete after Cupid hit Zeus (the Greek version of Jupiter) with an arrow and he fell under Europa’s spell. The moon of Jupiter and the continent of Europe are named after her. Europa Compared to Earth. Europa's global ocean may have been in existence for billions of years.
The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa features a widely varied landscape, including ridges, bands, small rounded domes and disrupted spaces that geologists call "chaos terrain." Three newly reprocessed images, taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s, reveal details in diverse surface features on Europa.
The first picture NASA’s Juno spacecraft took as it flew by Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has arrived on Earth. Revealing surface features in a region near the moon’s equator called Annwn Regio, the image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft’s closest approach, on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT ...
This view of Jupiter's icy moon Europa was captured by JunoCam on NASA's Juno spacecraft during the mission's close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. The picture is a composite of JunoCam's second, third, and fourth images taken during the flyby, as seen from the perspective of the fourth image.
