'Footprint' spotted on the surface of Jupiter's moon

The photograph of Jupiter's icy moon was taken during the spacecraft's flyby on September 29, 2022. This

a photo with the highest resolution of thosethat NASA's Juno mission has ever done. The photograph shows a detailed view of a mysterious region of the moon's highly fragmented icy crust. It is noteworthy that a “foot print” can be seen in the photograph. Of course, it is not real, the shape resembles a boot print due to cracks and collisions with space rocks.

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

The image covers a section of Europa's surfacemeasuring approximately 150 km by 200 km, dotted with a network of thin grooves and double ridges (pairs of long parallel lines indicating elevations in the ice). The white dots in the image are signatures of penetrating high-energy particles from the strong radiation environment around the moon.

The black and white image was taken at a distanceabout 412 km, resolution - from 256 to 340 meters per pixel. During the photograph, Juno was traveling at a speed of about 24 km/s over a part of Europa's surface that was dimly illuminated at night by the "Jupiter glow" - sunlight reflecting off the gas giant's cloud tops.

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