The first images made by the American Juno spacecraft were published when it flew near Jupiter's satellite in Europe, and the probe captured the ice surface of the satellite, including from a very close distance, at the peak of September 29, at 12:36 msk, approximately 352 km from Europe's surface.
It was only the third close flight in Europe at a height of less than 500 km. It produced the most detailed image since January 3, 2000, when the Galileo machine passed at a distance of 351 km from the satellite. Europe is the sixth largest satellite in the solar system, slightly smaller than the size of the Earth's Moon.
NASA's photo fragment shows a part of Europe's surface north of the equator. Due to the high contrast along the terminator line, the roughness of the terrain is clearly visible, including the extended depth near the shadow boundary, possibly a crater. Juno's new data on Europe's geologic will be useful for future missions, including the Europa Clipper mission, which will be launched in 2024 to study the atmosphere, the surface and the inner part of Jupiter's satellite, as well as to answer the question whether there might be life there.
Juno had only two hours to take pictures -- he ran past Europe at a relative speed of about 23.6 km/s. The image resolution was as high as 1 km per pixel. The machine also received valuable data on Europe's ionosphere, its surface, the composition of the ice layer and what was under it. After passing through Europe, the Juno trajectory changed from 43 days to 38 days. In June 2021, the machine sent images of Ganymede, another Jupiter satellite, and in 2023 and 2024 it would fly near Io, the most geologically active body of the solar system.