Planet Jupiter's Moon Ganymede | NASA's New Horizons Mission

Planet Jupiter's Moon Ganymede | NASA's New Horizons Mission

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this look at Jupiter's moon Ganymede silhouetted against the planet's crescent

Planet Jupiter's moon Ganymede

Planet Jupiter's moon Ganymede in visible and infrared light

In March 2007, while en route to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured these views of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, including one silhouetted against the giant planet's crescent. Today, NASA's Juno Mission orbits Jupiter, and Europa Clipper is on its way.

Ganymede is a natural satellite of Jupiter and is the largest and most massive moon in the Solar System. Like Saturn's largest moon Titan, it is larger than the planet Mercury, but has somewhat less surface gravity than Mercury, Io, or the Moon due to its lower density compared to the three. 

Ganymede is composed of silicate rock and water in approximately equal proportions. It is a fully differentiated body with an iron-rich, liquid metallic core, giving it the lowest moment of inertia factor of any solid body in the Solar System. Its internal ocean potentially contains more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. 

Ganymede is the only natural satellite in the solar system to possess an internally generated magnetic field. It is probably created by convection within its core, and influenced by tidal forces from Jupiter's far greater magnetic field.

Learn more about NASA's exploration efforts at Jupiter:

https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/exploration/

NASA's Europa Clipper Mission:

https://europa.nasa.gov/

New Horizons successfully pulled off the first exploration of the Pluto system in July 2015, followed by the farthest flyby in history—and first close-up look at a Kuiper Belt object (KBO)—with its flight past Arrokoth on New Year’s Day 2019.

Follow New Horizons' historic voyage at:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu

NASA's New Horizons mission is still active. New Horizons is expected to continue its mission until it exits the Kuiper Belt, anticipated to occur in either 2028 or 2029. The mission remains in excellent health with enough fuel and power to operate through the 2040s.

Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University/APL, Southwest Research Institute
Dates: March 2-4, 2007

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