To celebrate the selection of ESA's new mission to Jupiter and its icy moons, I have reprocessed another Galileo view of Europa. On May 2, 2012, the European Space Agency (ESA) approved the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) mission, which will conduct flybys of Jupiter's moons Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa before settling into orbit around Ganymede. The mission is slated to arrive in 2030. It is not known yet whether NASA will choose to participate or (hopefully) send its own mission to conduct a detailed study of Europa. The exciting thing is that even if NASA does drop the ball on outer planets exploration, it appears that ESA will take up the mantle.
The dataset I processed was obtained by the Galileo spacecraft on September 25, 1998, during its 17th orbit of Jupiter. It has been processed to reduce compression artifacts and noise and to bring out detail. Color data was borrowed from other datasets. Although there is some overlap along the terminator (day-night boundary), this image shows areas of Europa not visible in the global views I have processed in the past.
The second version is processed to highlight color differences.
Processed Images Copyright Ted Stryk, Raw Data Courtesy NASA/JPL
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