木卫四：肮脏的冰球
(原标题: Callisto: Dirty Battered Iceball)
2025-09-01
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它的表面是太阳系中陨石坑最密集的地方，但里面是什么呢？木星的卫星木卫四是一个破碎的脏冰球，比水星还大。在20世纪90年代和21世纪初，美国宇航局的伽利略号宇宙飞船曾访问过它，但最近重新处理的特征图像来自1979年美国宇航局的旅行者2号飞越。如果不是因为千万年的撞击造成的浅色裂缝表面冰的织锦，月球会显得更暗。木卫四的内部可能更有趣，因为里面可能有一层液态水。这片潜在的地下海洋是孕育生命的候选者——类似于姐妹卫星木卫二和木卫三。木卫四比月球略大，但由于其高冰含量，质量略小。欧洲航天局的JUICE和美国宇航局的木卫二快船任务现在正前往木星，以更好地调查其最大的卫星。
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Its surface is the most densely cratered in the Solar System -- but what's inside? Jupiter's moon Callisto is a battered ball of dirty ice that is larger than the planet Mercury. It was visited by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s and 2000s, but the recently reprocessed featured image is from a flyby of NASA's Voyager 2 in 1979. The moon would appear darker if it weren't for the tapestry of light-colored fractured surface ice created by eons of impacts. The interior of Callisto is potentially even more interesting because therein might lie an internal layer of liquid water. This potential underground sea is a candidate to harbor life -- similar with sister moons Europa and Ganymede. Callisto is slightly larger than Luna, Earth's Moon, but because of its high ice content is slightly less massive. ESA's JUICE and NASA's Europa Clipper missions are now headed out to Jupiter to better investigate its largest moons.