Data collected by NASA’s Juno mission indicates a briny past may be bubbling to the surface on Jupiter’s largest moon.
NASA’s Juno mission has observed mineral salts and organic compounds on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Data for this discovery was collected by the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper spectrometer aboard the spacecraft during a close flyby of the icy moon. The findings, which could help scientists better understand the origin of Ganymede and the composition of its deep ocean, were published on Oct.
Larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede is the biggest of Jupiter’s moons and has long been of great interest to scientists due to the vast internal ocean of water hidden beneath its icy crust. Previous spectroscopic observations by NASA’sas well as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope hinted at the presence of salts and organics, but the spatial resolution of those observations was too low to make a determination.
Processed data from the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper spectrometer aboard NASA’s Juno mission is superimposed on a mosaic of optical images from the agency’ s Galileo and Voyager spacecraft that show grooved terrain on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.at a minimum altitude of 650 miles . Shortly after the time of closest approach, the JIRAM instrument acquired infrared images and infrared spectra of the moon’s surface.
“The presence of ammoniated salts suggests that Ganymede may have accumulated materials cold enough to condense ammonia during its formation,” said Federico Tosi, a Juno co-investigator from Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome and lead author of the paper. “The carbonate salts could be remnants of carbon dioxide-rich ices.
Ganymede is not the only Jovian world Juno has flown by. The moon Europa, thought to harbor an ocean under its icy crust, also came under Juno’s gaze, first in. The next close approach to that volcano-festooned world is scheduled for Dec. 30, when the spacecraft will come within 932 miles of Io’s surface.
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