2 weeks Ago By Harsh Vardhan
The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared new pictures of Earth and the Moon taken by its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer or Juice spacecraft. The images feature a half-lit Earth with the tiny looking Moon to its right. According to ESA, Juice was about 5 million kilometres away from our planet when it used its monitoring cameras to take the pictures.
📸 Captured on camera! 🌑🌍 These two little marbles we call our cosmic home were photographed by Juice from over 5 million km, as the spacecraft waved us goodbye while heading towards Venus. The images were taken using different exposure times as part of inflight tests and..
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com/0AtVzPIIC8 — ESA's Juice mission (@ESA_JUICE) September 18, 2024 Juice is currently on its way to Venus for a flyby after leaving Earth post the gravity assist on August 21. "These two little marbles we call our cosmic home were photographed by Juice from over 5 million km, as the spacecraft waved us goodbye while heading towards Venus," the captioned on the post read. ALSO SEE: ESA's Juice Probe Flies By Earth Rendering Stunning Views; Watch Historic Moment "The images were taken using different exposure times as part of inflight tests and calibrations of Juice's monitoring cameras," ESA added.
🆕Timelapse! Volume up, sit back and enjoy #ESAJuice 's lunar-Earth flyby in all its glory 🤩 pic.twitter.com/3aPGl3JQG0 — ESA's Juice mission (@ESA_JUICE) August 27, 2024 Juice was launched in April 2023 and is currently on an8-year-long journey to Jupiter's Moons - Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.
The probe will characterise these moons and determine if the suspected oceans hidden beneath their icy crust could be habitable. The spacecraft completed its historic first lunar-Earth flyby last month to get a fuel-efficient push toward Venus. It will be back to Earth in September 2026 and January 2029.
ALSO SEE: JUICE Mission: ESA Launches Europe's First Dedicated Jupiter Mission Successfully; Watch (Image: ESA).
