NASA flyby of Jupiter's big moon Ganymede revealed massive unknown craters

Scientists are still trying to understand what the encounter with the largest moon in Jupiter can teach us.

The largest moon in the solar system has been imaged by two missions. Large blank spots that scientists knew nothing about were left when some of those images were taken at a less than ideal angle. Scientists were thrilled when NASA's Jupiter explorer Juno revealed the moon's crater-covered surface in the greatest detail ever, and spotted shimmering Auroras stretching between the poles and equator.

At the lunar and planetary science conference that took place March 7 in Massachusetts, Goeffrey Collins, a geology professor at Wheaton College, said that the images outlined a lot of new features on the surface of the moon.

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Collins said that they missed some big impact craters that they couldn't see in the data. The big 100 kilometer crater is obvious in the data. There is a little less obvious crater that is about 100 kilometers wide.

The scientists believe that the volcanic activity of the island may have caused several smaller craters and features.

Collins said that they have found caldera-like features similar to the ones they have seen in other parts of Ganymede. In the case of the moon, craters are volcanic craters that were likely created by cryovolcanoes that spout frozen water and gas.

The number of features seen in the images suggest that there is more volcanic activity on the moon than previously thought.

Collins said that this increases the number of caldera-like features that they found on all of the island. As we get new data, there might be a lot more of these found.

The largest moon in the solar system is also the only one that has its own magnetic field. The moon has a massive underground ocean of salty water, which is up to 60 miles deep and hidden underneath a 95-mile-thick (150 km) crust of ice and rock, because of the variations in the magnetic field. The existence of primitive forms of life is a possibility if the ocean is a prime candidate.

Jupiter has a magnetic field and enormous gravity that attracts passing asteroids and comets.

There are only a few bright Auroras on a moon, the result of the interplay between the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Ganymede. The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of the Auroras, but the recent flyby of Juno gave scientists more information.

At the conference, a researcher from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said that they were able to see the exact locations of theauroral emissions.

The European Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer is expected to launch next year.

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