[아이뉴스24 정종오 기자] September is turning into the ‘Jupiter Age’. Jupiter acts as the ‘eldest brother’ of the solar system. It does a lot of defense by pulling asteroids rushing towards Earth with gravity. Jupiter has a ‘Great Red Spot’ the size of the Earth. Life is predicted to exist on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently released news related to Jupiter. On the 26th, Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in 59 years since 1963. In addition, the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) probe, which collided with an asteroid on the 27th Korean time, captured Jupiter and four moons and sent them to Earth.
According to NASA, “DART photographed Jupiter from 26 million km from Earth and 700 million km from Jupiter.” DART will be dispatched to the asteroid Dimorphus on the 27th. It is a project to test whether this collision can change the orbit of an asteroid.
There are no known asteroids that will hit Earth in the near future. However, the universe is so wide that there are many small asteroids that have not yet been observed, and it is impossible to monitor all of them. For this reason, DART is intended to prepare for a possible asteroid impact to Earth.
Launched on November 24, last year, the DART probe took several stars and planets as it headed towards the impact site. In order for the probe to go to the correct destination, it finds a star in a specific area and sets its own direction. In this way, it finds its position and then flies. On July 1st and August 2nd, DART directed its equipment to Jupiter to test the navigation system.
The point of collision is also Didymos and its moon Timophus. Because of this, the DART team focused on Jupiter’s posterior moon Europa. Through this, it was possible to determine whether the DART navigation system was operating normally.
Jupiter, the solar system’s ‘eldest’ planet, will be closest to Earth on the 26th. At this time, Jupiter will reach a distance of 587,415,560 km from Earth. When Earth and Jupiter are at their most distant, the distance is about 965.6 million miles.
According to NASA, “If you observe Jupiter using binoculars near the moon (September 26), you will be able to find three or four Galilean moons.” Jupiter has about 70 moons, of which Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are called ‘Galilean moons’.
In addition, the Junoor spacecraft Juno will approach Jupiter’s moon Europa within 358 km on the 29th. Europa is an icy satellite, which it believes has oceans. It is considered to be a moon with a high possibility of life and liquid water under the thick ice.
/Reporter Jeong Jong-oh([email protected])