Tag Archives: Solar System Exploration program

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Close-Up Photo of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Shows a Bizarre Surface

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NASA’s Juno spacecraft took images of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa during a recent flyby. One of the photos—released this week by NASA—offers an intimate view of Europa’s surface features.

Juno has orbited the gas giant Jupiter since 2016, but only recently has NASA diverted the spacecraft’s attention to the planet’s moons. Europa is of particular scientific interest because scientists believe a salty ocean lies beneath the moon’s frozen surface.

If such an ocean is there—something the upcoming Europa Clipper mission will investigate using surface-penetrating radar—it could host ingredients for life, if not life itself.

The recent image was taken during Juno’s flyby on September 29, during which the spacecraft came within about 220 miles of the moon’s surface. The image covers a roughly 11,600-square-mile swath of Europa, a region dominated with grooves and ridges in the ice. It’s a black-and-white photo taken from about 256 miles above the surface and is the highest-resolution image taken of a specific portion of the moon.

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The new pic builds on the first images released from the flyby. Darker splotches on the ice could indicate something beneath the moon’s crust erupting onto the surface, according to a recent NASA release. White flecks dotting the image are signatures of high-energy particles from the radiation in the moon’s surrounding environment.

“These features are so intriguing,” said Heidi Becker, the lead co-investigator for the camera used to take the image, in the release. “Understanding how they formed – and how they connect to Europa’s history – informs us about internal and external processes shaping the icy crust.”

Though Juno began its focus on Jupiter, its investigation has expanded to that of four Galilean satellites and the gas giant’s rings—not so easily seen, but recently captured in images by the Webb Space Telescope.

Juno flew by Ganymede (the largest moon in the solar system) in June 2021, and in 2023 Io will get its own flyby. Juno is significantly expanding its observational targets and will be supplanted in the early 2030s by NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will investigate Europa’s ability to foster life with state-of-the-art instruments.

Europa’s surface may look pretty hostile in black and white and from 200 miles up, but beneath the ice, it could be an entirely different story.

More: Check Out Juno’s First Up-Close Images of Icy Europa

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NASA’s DART Mission Will Totally Deform Dimorphos Asteroid

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The DART mission will be the first to test asteroid deflection through kinetic impactor technology.
Illustration: NASA

In order to protect the Earth, some sacrifices must be made. NASA’s DART spacecraft is currently on its way to a binary asteroid system known as Didymos and will essentially crash into one tiny asteroid to test out a deflection method. But rather than leaving behind an impact crater as initially intended, the DART spacecraft may actually deform the mini-moon, making it nearly unrecognizable.

Using a new model, a group of researchers have simulated the entire cratering process and discovered that the asteroid deflection mission might completely alter its target, changing its appearance far more severely than previously believed. 

“The DART impact could globally deform Dimorphos, and therefore change its overall shape significantly, instead of creating just a small crater,” Martin Jutzi, co-author of the study, which was published in The Planetary Science Journal, told Gizmodo in an email.

This illustration shows the possible shapes that the asteroid might take following impact.
Illustration: Courtesy of Martin Jutzi

As seen in the above illustration, the mini-moon, dubbed Dimorphos (formerly known as Didymoon), could take on one of these six possible shapes following the spacecraft’s impact. The whole cratering process could take a few hours, which is why previous models of the impact did not predict the asteroid’s subsequent deformation. “Previous models were only able to simulate the first seconds of such events,” Jutzi said.

Short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the DART mission launched in November 2021 towards the Didymos asteroid system. Didymos is an 800-meter wide rock with its own 170-meter wide moon known as Dimorphos, the main target of DART. The spacecraft will smash into the mini-moon at 15,000 miles per hour (24, 140 kilometers per hour), attempting to offset its orbit. The impact is scheduled for late September or early October, when the pair will come within 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of Earth.

The purpose of the test is to experiment with kinetic impactor technology as a means of deflecting asteroids that could be headed towards Earth. NASA and other space agencies, keep a close watch on asteroids that come too close for comfort in order to assess whether or not they pose a threat to our planet. But as far as defending Earth from incoming asteroid impacts, there’s no clear cut plan on what to do.

“These weak asteroids could actually be deflected much more strongly and larger amounts of material could be ejected from the impact than the previous estimates predicted,” Jutzi said. “These larger effects should be easier to observe immediately after the DART impact.” So the DART mission will still be able to perform the experiment, just perhaps with a different outcome than initially anticipated.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is also planning a follow-up mission to the pair of space rocks. ESA is scheduled to launch its Hera mission in 2024, which will rendezvous with Didymos by 2026 to study the impact crater left behind by DART, and any other changes made to the asteroid. If Dimorphos has indeed taken on a different appearance, it may provide valuable data on the asteroid itself.

“Ideally, this will allow us to learn something about the asteroid’s interior, rather than just the surface,” Jutzi said. “This would in turn provide very valuable information about the asteroid’s bulk properties and improve our understanding of asteroids in general.”

More: The Spacecraft That’s Going to Smash Into an Asteroid Just Sent Back Its First Pictures

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NASA Is Going To Crash A Probe Right Smack Dab Into An Asteroid For A Really Good Reason

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Image: NASA

Normally, NASA likes its probes to make contact with other objects in space in a very controlled manner. You want to land a rover on Mars, not drop a rover on Mars, for example. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is different. This time, NASA is going to stomp the ion pedal and just ram the damn thing with their spaceship, because fuck you, asteroid. Also, they’ll learn a lot about potentially diverting dangerous asteroids from becoming meteors that hit Earth. But mostly because they don’t like how that asteroid is looking at them.

Image: NASA

You know the DART project is exciting because it’s in the Planetary Defense section of the NASA website, which sounds like part of a movie involving lasers and at least one astronaut tumbling away into space.

The DART spacecraft is a boxy, ion-engined kinetic impactor with interesting roll-out solar panels, and looks like this:

Image: NASA

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The ion engine is especially interesting, because it’s a first application of a propulsion system likely to be used on future spacecraft:

“The DART spacecraft will demonstrate the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C)solar electric propulsion system as part of its in-space propulsion. NEXT-C is a next-generation system based on the Dawn spacecraft propulsion system, and was developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. By utilizing electric propulsion, DART could benefit from significant flexibility to the mission timeline while demonstrating the next generation of ion engine technology, with applications to potential future NASA missions.”

The target asteroid is an interesting choice, because it’s really two asteroids. The asteroid is called Didymos, and is a binary asteroid, because it has its own little “moonlet,” a smaller asteroid that orbits Didymos. This moonlet is DART’s target.

Image: NASA

Using the solar-powered ion engine and advanced autonomous targeting software, DART will ram itself into the moonlet, which will change the speed of the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos, a change that can be studied by telescopes on Earth.

Image: NASA

Studying the change in the orbital path can help us figure out how to most effectively smack a potential Earth-impacting asteroid off course enough to miss our planet, where we not only keep our stuff, but is also the location of every Shake Shack known to humankind.

Also, like any good, modern fight, there will be a witness getting the whole thing on video, in this case a small Cubesat that will be released prior to impact and may or may not upload the footage to Worldstar.

Over at Vice, there’s a good interview with astronomer Andy Rivkin who gives a great explanation of the DART mission and what it hopes to accomplish:

So, yeah, take that, asteroid. That little punk moonlet has until November 24 to February 15 of 2022 to get its shit together, since that’s the current launch window for DART.

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