Planet Jupiter's Underground Ocean Moon Ganymede Close-up | NASA Juno Mission

Planet Jupiter's Underground Ocean Moon Ganymede Close-up | NASA Juno Mission

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is proving to be a fascinating world. Not only is it the largest moon in our solar system, bigger than the planet Mercury and the dwarf planet Pluto, but NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for an underground saltwater ocean on Ganymede. The ocean is thought to have more water than all the water on Earth's surface. Ganymede’s ocean is estimated to be 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick—10 times deeper than Earth's ocean—and is thought to be buried under a 95-mile- (150-kilometer-) thick crust of mostly ice. Identifying liquid water is crucial in the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth and in the search for life as we know it. Ganymede is also the only moon in the Solar System to have a magnetosphere. 

The European Space Agency's JUICE Mission will arrive at Ganymede in 2031 to conduct investigations. 

Learn more about Europe's JUICE Mission: https://bit.ly/JuiceESAScience

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.

More information about Juno:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno
and
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu

Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)/Caltech/Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)
Processing: Andrea Luck

Andrea's Twitter Page: https://twitter.com/andrluck
Release Dates: Jan. 1-2, 2022 

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