Week of May 27, 2024
This week, we present a planetary smorgasbord featuring Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, gorgeous moons, and a new mission getting ready to launch!
Credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS
Technicians offload NASA’s largest planetary mission spacecraft, Europa Clipper, from a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft at the Launch and Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 23. NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy later this year. The launch period opens on Oct. 10.
Tuesday, 28 May 2024
Credit: NASA, International Space Station Expedition 59
Orbiting 400 kilometers above Quebec, Canada, planet Earth, the International Space Station Expedition 59 crew captured this snapshot of the broad St. Lawrence River and curiously circular Lake Manicouagan on April 11, 2019. Right of center, the ring-shaped lake is a modern reservoir within the eroded remnant of an ancient 100-kilometer diameter impact crater. The ancient crater is very conspicuous from orbit, a visible reminder that Earth is vulnerable to rocks from space. Over 200 million years old, the Manicouagan crater was likely caused by the impact of a rocky body about 5 kilometers in diameter.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck
Korolev is an ice-filled impact crater in the Mare Boreum quadrangle of Mars, located at 73° north latitude and 165° east longitude. The crater is 81.4 kilometers in diameter and contains about 2,200 cubic kilometers of water ice, comparable in volume to Great Bear Lake in northern Canada. Taken by the HRSC onboard ESA's Mars Express spacecraft.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Kevin M. Gill
The shadow is not that of Europa but a second moon (Io), which is not in this frame. Europa is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, with an orbital distance from Jupiter of 670,900 km, and is tidally locked, so the same side always faces Jupiter. Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) is a vast cyclonic storm system about three times the size of Earth when Voyager flew by. Since 1979, the GRS has continuously shrunk, slowly changing its shape from an oval to a circle. It is now a little over the size of the Earth only. Image captured using orange and violet filters by Voyager 1 on March 3rd, 1979.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
To end our week, we look back at this beautiful picture of Titan and Saturn taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on May 22, 2015. Processed using calibrated near-infrared (MT2, CB2) filtered images.
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