Ganymede (moon)

Ganymede, or Jupiter III, is the largest and most massive natural satellite of Jupiter as well as in the Solar System, being a planetary-mass moon. It is the largest Solar System object without an atmosphere, despite being the only moon of the Solar System with a magnetic field. Like Titan, it is larger than the planet Mercury, but has somewhat less surface gravity than Mercury, Io or the Moon. Ganymede is composed of approximately equal amounts of silicate rock and water. It is a fully differentiated body with an iron-rich, liquid core, and an internal ocean that may contain more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. Its surface is composed of two main types of terrain. Dark regions, saturated with impact craters and dated to four billion years ago, cover about a third of it. Lighter regions, crosscut by extensive grooves and ridges and only slightly less ancient, cover the remainder. The cause of the light terrain's disrupted geology is not fully known, but was likely the result of tectonic activity due to tidal heating. Ganymede orbits Jupiter in roughly seven days and is in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively. Possessing a metallic core, it has the lowest moment of inertia factor of any solid body in the Solar System. Ganymede's magnetic field is probably created by convection within its liquid iron core, also created by Jupiter's tidal forces. The meager magnetic field is buried within Jupiter's far larger magnetic field and would show only as a local perturbation of the field lines. Ganymede has a thin oxygen atmosphere that includes O, O2, and possibly O3 (ozone). Atomic hydrogen is a minor atmospheric constituent. Whether Ganymede has an ionosphere associated with its atmosphere is unresolved. Ganymede's discovery is credited to Simon Marius and Galileo Galilei, who both observed it in 1610, as the third of the Galilean moons, the first group of objects discovered orbiting another planet.

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Io (moon)

Io (ˈaɪ.oʊ), or Jupiter I, is the innermost and third-largest of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is the fourth-largest moon in the Solar System, has the highest density of any moon, the strongest surface gravity of any moon, and the lowest amount of water (by atomic ratio) of any known astronomical object in the Solar System. It was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after the mythological character Io, a priestess of Hera who became one of Zeus's lovers.

Escape velocity

In celestial mechanics, escape velocity or escape speed is the minimum speed needed for a free, non-propelled object to escape from the gravitational influence of a primary body, thus reaching an infinite distance from it. It is typically stated as an ideal speed, ignoring atmospheric friction. Although the term "escape velocity" is common, it is more accurately described as a speed than a velocity because it is independent of direction.

Callisto (moon)

Callisto (kəˈlɪstoʊ, ), or Jupiter IV, is the second-largest moon of Jupiter, after Ganymede. In the Solar System it is the third-largest moon after Ganymede and Saturn's largest moon Titan, and as large as the smallest planet Mercury, though only about a third as massive. Callisto is, with a diameter of 4821km, roughly a third larger than the Moon and orbits Jupiter on average at a distance of 1883000km, which is about six times further out than the Moon orbiting Earth.

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