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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this far-off portrait of Jupiter in August 2021.
NASA/GSFC/Arizona State College
It seems to be like a marble sitting on velvet. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been in residence round our moon since 2009, appeared out into the photo voltaic system and captured an ethereal snapshot of stormy gasoline large planet Jupiter. The picture comes from late August. Brett Denevi, deputy principal investigator for the LRO Digital camera, highlighted the portrait on Twitter final week, writing, “From the Moon to Jupiter, with Love.”
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The picture is extraordinary not for its readability, however for what it represents: an incredible effort from a spacecraft tasked with orbiting and imaging our moon. LRO is designed to gaze on the moon’s floor. It is outdated, and a few of its tools is not working prefer it used to. This higher-contrast model of LRO’s Jupiter picture reveals the place 4 of the gasoline large’s moons might be positioned within the picture.
NASA/GSFC/Arizona State College
“The spacecraft can be gracefully ageing so the photo voltaic panels should be turned away from the solar for as little time as potential,” Denevi wrote in an announcement. “After which including in different thermal and timing constraints, the operations workforce needed to work onerous to seek out simply the precise time to show the spacecraft towards the outer photo voltaic system and scan throughout Jupiter to get this picture.”When you look intently on the snapshot, you will observed what seems to be like a wispy extension on the precise facet of Jupiter. An annotated model of the picture factors out that the protrusion is definitely the planet’s moons Europa and Io. The upper-contrast shot helps the moons Ganymede and Callisto come out as effectively.
Jaw-dropping Jupiter: NASA’s Juno mission eyes the gasoline large
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Due to NASA’s Juno mission, now we have all types of lavish close-up views of Jupiter with its swirling storms. These Juno pictures are eye-popping, however LRO’s stripped-down imaginative and prescient of the planet is a reminder of the flexibility and longevity of NASA’s lunar spacecraft.LRO may help us think about a future the place people are visiting the moon extra typically and surveying the photo voltaic system from a spot that is each shut and much away.
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