![]() ![]() INTERACTIVE: Explore where the search for life is unfolding across our solar system The fracturing of these moons led to the creation of hundreds of smaller moons, Sheppard said. Sheppard and his team believe that these moons are remnants of at least seven larger moons that broke apart when they collided with other moons, asteroids or comets. The giant planet region is where the largest planets in our solar system can be found, and it’s devoid of objects now because the planets gobbled up all of the material in the formation process. These outer moons are important to understand because they are the last remnants of the population of objects that formed in the giant planet region as the rest of the material was incorporating into the planets.” “The hope is that if we find enough, one of them will happen to just be near the spacecraft’s trajectory for it to get close-up images. ![]() “These outer moons can only be visited by these spacecraft as they enter Jupiter’s gravitational sphere of influence,” Sheppard said. NASA spacecraft captures image of ocean world orbiting Jupiter during flyby At closest approach, the spacecraft came within a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers). The complex, ice-covered surface of Jupiter's moon Europa was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft during a flyby on Sept. And the missions might be able to swing by the newly discovered moons on their way. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, launching in April, and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, expected to launch in 2024, will be visiting Jupiter and some of its moons this decade. Sheppard and his team are in the process of tracking “many, many more moons around Jupiter,” but they need more observations to confirm and announce their discoveries.įinding additional moons around Jupiter and determining their orbits could help identify targets for future missions. Technology is making it easier to observe Jupiter and the area around it in greater detail. “The International Astronomical Union allows the naming of any moon larger than about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) in size, of which half of these new discoveries are larger than that, so they will get names,” Sheppard said.īecause Jupiter is a bright planet, astronomers have had to deal with the issue of glare and scattered light affecting the space where moons can exist. Under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union, the organization is responsible for the identification, designation and orbital data for such celestial objects. The Minor Planet Center tracks the positions of minor planets, comets and space rocks. The most volcanic world in the solar system is about to be visited by a NASA spacecraft In this image, the brighter the color the higher the temperature recorded by JIRAM. This infrared image was derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno. NASA's Juno mission captured this infrared view of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io on July 5, 2022, when the spacecraft was about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away. “We have been surveying for new moons around Jupiter serendipitously while our main survey is looking for planets in the outer solar system beyond Pluto,” Sheppard said. Jupiter and its natural satellites were in alignment with more distant targets that Sheppard and his team have been seeking in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects circling the sun that’s located past the orbit of Neptune on the edge of the solar system. The Dark Energy Camera can survey the sky for faint objects. They used the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in September 2021 and the Dark Energy Camera located on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in August 2022. The discovery was made during observations by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and his team. And now, the gas giant has the most known moons, too.Īstronomers have observed 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing its total number of confirmed moons to 92. Jupiter already reigns as king of the planets - it’s the largest one in our solar system.
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