In brief: NASA has shared the first ii images captured by its Juno Spacecraft before this week as it zipped by Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. The flyby happened on June 7 and is the closest a spacecraft has come to Jupiter's icy moon in more than 2 decades.

Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said they are going to take their time before drawing any scientific conclusions from the images, just for at present, "we tin simply marvel at this angelic wonder."

The images – one from the orbiter's JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera – highlight craters, nighttime and light spots on the terrain and what NASA believes could exist structural features linked to tectonic faults.

The JunoCam managed to capture almost an entire side of the moon using its green filter. Later, once versions of the same photo are beamed back using the red and blue filters, NASA will exist able to provide a colour portrait of the moon.

(The Stellar Reference Unit is a navigation camera that helps keep the craft on course. It provided this black-and-white image of the nighttime side of Ganymede.)

NASA'due south Juno infinite probe left Cape Canaveral on August 5, 2022, and entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on July 5, 2022. Earlier this year, NASA extended the probe's mission span to September 2025. Once its piece of work is done, information technology will be sent into Jupiter'southward atmosphere for disintegration.

More images are expected in the coming days and volition be available on NASA's website.