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Picture of the day -
December 15, 2007
Close-up view of a "gibbous" Europa
Photo courtesy of
NASA.
Back on May 22, I featured a stunning image of
Jupiter's moon
Europa rising above the gas giant's horizon, an amazing feat of
modern scientific photography aided by an even more amazing unmanned
space vehicle called the
New Horizons spacecraft. Today's picture features another
wonderful image of a
gibbous Europa, and it was also captured by one of our
robotic explorers:
Galileo.
Beginning in 1995, Galileo orbited our solar system's largest planet
for eight years, and during that time she beamed back to earth
thousands of high-resolution images of both Jupiter and her moons,
of which there are literally dozens. Europa has long been the most
intriguing of Jupiter's moons, and thanks to the tremendous success
of our visiting unmanned "laboratories" we now have a bevy of stunning
photographs of the icy orb as well as heaps of scientific data to
ponder and study.
As we make preparations to send a crew of fearless human
explorers back to our own moon, and eventually to Mars, we must also keep
sending out robotic explorers to the nether regions of our solar
system and points far beyond. The overwhelming success of the Apollo
program, the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and a number
of other unmanned missions to various heavenly bodies in our solar
system has proven that we Americans have both the will and ability
to travel as far into God's amazing universe as our collective
imagination wishes to take us.
Visitor comments:
Name: Cheria Rouse
Town: Abingdon, VA
I'll stay here, thank you... The only space travel I'm gonna be
doing
is when I travel to meet God... ---Your Darlin'
Wife
Click here to comment on this picture.
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