New From Cassini: Jupiter Family Pictures

With the huge, colorful face of Jupiter as a backdrop to
keep sizes in perspective, three of that planet’s four major
moons are on display in new images for release today and tomorrow
from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

Europa and Callisto are aligned with each other and the
center of Jupiter in a true-color Cassini picture available
online today from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., at

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter

and from the web site of the Cassini Imaging Science team at the
University of Arizona, Tucson, at

http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .

A Cassini picture of the moon Ganymede at Jupiter will be
available Friday, Dec. 22.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter
for five years, recently found evidence of a liquid ocean hidden
below Ganymede’s surface. Galileo will fly past Ganymede for
another close encounter on Dec. 28.

Cassini will pass Jupiter at a distance of about 9.7 million
kilometers (6 million miles) on Dec. 30. The spacecraft will use
a boost from Jupiter’s gravity to reach its ultimate destination,
Saturn, in July 2004. Additional information from collaborative
studies of Jupiter by Cassini and NASA’s Galileo spacecraft is
available online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and
Galileo missions for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington,
D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena.