NASA's Juno probe beams back razor-sharp images of Jupiter's moon Ganymede

Orbiting Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft streaked past Ganymede on Monday, beaming back the first close-up views of the largest moon in the solar system since the Galileo orbiter last flew past in 2000.

"This is the closest any spacecraft has come to this mammoth moon in a generation," Scott Bolton, the Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. "We are going to take our time before we draw any scientific conclusions, but until then we can simply marvel at this celestial wonder, the only moon in our solar system bigger than the planet Mercury." Juno raced by Ganymede at 1:35 p.m. EDT Monday, passing within about 645 miles of the moon and capturing a razor-sharp view of the cratered world, thought to harbor a sub-surface sea beneath an icy crust. Along with capturing fresh images, Juno's suite of science instruments also collected data.