Juno swoops past Europa, revealing the mysterious, icy world [Updated]
Enlarge / The complex, ice-covered surface of Jupiter's moon Europa was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft during a flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS)
3:25pm ET Update: A few hours after Juno's flyby, the spacecraft started sending data back to Earth. NASA has published the first of these processed photos, which shows a region near the moon's equator called Annwn Regio. The data in this photo was collected at a distance of 352 km above the moon, the point of closest approach during this flyby.
Plenty of rugged terrain is visible in this image, including dark ridges and troughs across the surface. The oblong pit near the terminator might be a degraded impact crater, NASA says.
Original post: On Thursday morning, NASA's Juno spacecraft swooped down to within 358 km of the surface of Europa, the large, ice-encrusted Moon that orbits Jupiter.