Jupiter Archives

Europa, Ganymede, Icy Worlds, Jupiter, Missions & Hardware, Status Report

JUICE Astrobiology Mission Update

by Keith CowingJanuary 25, 2025January 25, 2025

Since the beginning of the year, the downlink rate of Juice has been dropping dramatically to only 1/6th of usual data rate.

The north polar region of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io was captured by NASA’s Juno during the spacecraft’s 57th close pass of the gas giant on Dec. 30, 2023. Data from recent flybys is helping scientists understand Io’s interior. Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Gerald Eichstädt

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Io, Jupiter, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release

How Io Became The Most Volcanic Body In Our Solar System

by Keith CowingDecember 26, 2024

Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have discovered that the volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io are each likely powered by their own chamber of roiling hot magma rather than […]

This is a montage of NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024. This long baseline allows astronomers to track seasonal changes in each planet's turbulent atmosphere, with the sharpness of the NASA planetary flyby probes of the 1980s. These images were taken under a program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy). NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Astronomy & Telescopes, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Jupiter, Neptune, Press Release, Saturn, Uranus

Hubble Celebrates A Decade Of Tracking Outer Planets

by Keith CowingDecember 10, 2024December 10, 2024

Encountering Neptune in 1989, NASA’s Voyager mission completed humankind’s first close-up exploration of the four giant outer planets of our solar system. Collectively, since their launch in 1977, the twin […]

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Impact events, Status Report

Migration of Bodies to the Earth from Different Distances from the Sun

by Keith CowingNovember 20, 2024November 20, 2024

Migration of bodies under the gravitational influence of almost formed planets was studied, and probabilities of their collisions with the Earth and other terrestrial planets were calculated. Based on the […]

Europa Clipper making a flyby of Europa -- NASA

Europa, Ganymede, Icy Worlds, Jupiter, Microbiology & Virology, Missions & Hardware, Planetary Protection & Biosafety, Radiation, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Europa Clipper Planetary Protection Probabilistic Risk Assessment Summary

by Keith CowingOctober 31, 2024October 31, 2024

Protecting Jupiter’s Icy Moons from the Earth’s biological contamination is a key consideration for the Europa Clipper mission. The mission’s goal is to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and investigate its […]

An icy Moon orbiting a Jupiter-sized Gas Giant -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Apps - Games, Astrogeology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Jupiter, Status Report

MultIHeaTS: A Fast and Stable Thermal Solver for Multilayered Planetary Surfaces

by Keith CowingOctober 22, 2024October 22, 2024

A fully implicit scheme is proposed for solving the heat equation in 1D heterogeneous media, available as a computationally efficient open-source Python code. The algorithm uses finite differences on an […]

A schematic diagram of the sulfur cycle on the icy Galilean moons. Not all processes operate on all moons and the circles with E, G, and C indicate which processes seem to be more restricted to Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, respectively. Ice radiolysis happens on all icy surfaces and reactions of radiolytically produced H2SO4 can transform brine salts to sulfates. Only for Europa and Callisto the subsurface ocean is likely to be in contact with the rocky ocean floor but not for Ganymede, where massive dense ice layers prevents ongoing exchange of the subsurface with the silicates. The ocean compositions seem to be all quite similar in the beginning, and Ganymede’s ocean might be the oldest ur-ocean remaining since isolation by dense ice. Subsurface oceans on Europa and Callisto can evolve depending on silicate mantle outgassing into the oceans which may increase salinity over time. On Europa acidification from radiolytically produced H2SO4 may happen, which could lead to an ocean with compositional gradients and pH and development of a halocline. This diagram does not claim completeness and is an attempt to summarize observations, ideas and interpretations. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, Gas Giants, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Io, Jupiter, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Neptune, Saturn, Status Report, Titan, Uranus

Sulfur in the Giant Planets, their Moons, and Extrasolar Gas Giant Planets

by Keith CowingOctober 18, 2024October 18, 2024

We review sulfur chemistry of the gas giant planets and their moons where sulfur compounds are observed. The major S-bearing gas in the upper atmospheres of the giant planets is […]

Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Jupiter, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Europa Clipper Astrobiology Explorer Sets Sail

by Keith CowingOctober 15, 2024October 15, 2024

NASA’s Europa Clipper has embarked on its long voyage to Jupiter, where it will investigate Europa, a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. […]

Panel A: crust age and thickness for 15 different zones of Loki Patera. Panel B: location of the zones chosen for the analysis. The color of the zones is coded according to the age of the crust, as indicated by the color bar to the right. The reference time for the crust age is set to the final observation epoch: April 9, 2024. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Io, Jupiter, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Status Report

Volcano World Survey: Observations Of Loki Patera By Juno During Close Flybys

by Keith CowingOctober 15, 2024October 15, 2024

We used data from the Juno spacecraft to investigate both the spatial and temporal properties of Loki Patera on Io, acquired in two infrared bands between December 2022 and April […]

SwRI’s Europa Clipper Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instrument will collect ultraviolet light to study the composition of the atmospheric gases and surface materials of Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons with a suspected subsurface ocean. Europa-UVS is the sixth in a series of SwRI-built ultraviolet spectrographs including two others surveying the Jupiter system. -- SwRI

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Jupiter, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Tricorders & Sensors, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

SwRI-Developed Instruments Will Study Potential Habitability Of Europa

by Keith CowingOctober 15, 2024October 15, 2024

Two Southwest Research Institute instruments were launched aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on Oct. 14 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. The spacecraft is designed to conduct a detailed reconnaissance […]