NASA’s spacecraft in Europe Clipper, and the route to the icy Europe of Ocean Moon de Jupiter, recently captured a ghostly infraction portrait of Mars, a cosmic photo that helped scientists adjust to life destined to investigate it.
The image, a blurred compound of more than a thousand snapshots in gray scale later colored by scientists, were tasks. Precision flyby either Mars On March 1, 2025. At its closest point, the spacecraft spared only 550 miles (884 kilometers) above the Martian surface, in a maneuver known as gravity assistance, which used the gravitational pull of the red planet the turba trip and adjusted and adjusted or its collection of almost 2 billion miles (3.2 billion km) to Jupiter.
The meeting of the letter also served a scientific portion: the mission team is cool Europe Thermal image system), which will possibly scan the surface of Europe in search of signs of recent or continuous geological activity. Around a period of 18 minutes on March 1, the instrument of more than 1,000 images on the gray scale, one per second, which will arrive on Earth on May 5, according to a NASA Declaration.
To confirm the accuracy of the instrument, the mission team purchased the new infrared images with the thermal maps maps of Mars gathered by the Odyssey Mars orbiter of the NASA, which has bones observing the observations team of the red planet, and the doorssey, and outside the coordinate, coordinated, European clipper Flyby to allow a direct comparison on the lateral side, according to the statement.
“We didn’t want surprises in these new images,” Phil Christensen, a professor of exploration of the Earth and Space at Arizona State University as the main researcher of the E-Themis instrument, said in the statement. “The objective was to capture images of a planetary body that we know extraordinarily well and make sure that the data set is seen exactly as it should, based on 20 years of instruments that document Mars.”
E-Themis detects scientists of infrared light that allows heat to map temperatures on a planetary surface. After the spacecraft reaches the Jupiter system in 2030, these thermal scans will help identify access points that could point to the recent geological activity under the frozen shell of Europe, according to the statement.
Infrared images will also help determine where the fixed ocean of Europe’s subsoil could be closer to the surface, scientists say. The moon is recorded with ridges and fractures, characteristics that scientists suspect that they result from the oceanic forces, such as the increase in water or convection currents, which separate ice from below.
“We want to measure the temperature of those characteristics,” said Christensen. If Europe is active, its fractures could be warmer than surrounding ice, especially where the ocean is close to the surface or fits the eruptions that remain in the persistent heat, he added.
The Mars Flyby also marked the first complete test in the clipper radar instrument, which could not be tested in its entirety on the ground due to the size of its antennas. Preliminary telemetry suggests that the test was successful, with a detailed analysis of the data still to come, the statement said.
With the complete Mars brochure, the next gravity assistance of Clipper will come from Land In 2026. The spacecraft is expected to enter Jupiter’s orbit in April 2030, after which a series of 49 nearby meetings will begin with Europe that will allow scientists to investigate the potential for the management of the moon life.
