File:Voyager 1 Image of Ganymede (9467445126).jpg

(March 4, 1979) Voyager 1 took this picture of Ganymede from a distance of 1.6 million miles. Ganymede is Jupiter's largest satellite with a radius of approximately 2600 kilometers, about 1.5 times that of Earth's Moon. Ganymede is the seventh and largest of Jupiter's known satellites and is the third of the Galilean moons. Discovered in 1610 by Galileo and Marius, Ganymede is the largest satellite in the Solar System. It was named after the Greek mythical character, Ganymede, a handsome Trojan boy that Zeus took to Olympus to be a cupbearer for the gods (one of the only humans in Greek mythology who became immortal). Ganymede is larger than Mercury but has only half Mercury's mass. It has a bulk density of only two grams per cubic centimeter, almost half that of Earth's Moon. Ganymede is most likely composed of a mixture of rock and ice. The long white filaments resemble rays associated with impacts on the lunar surface. The various colors of different regions probably represent differing surface materials. Several dots of a single color (blue, green, and orange) on the picture are the result of markings on the camera used for pointing determinations and are not physical markings. Voyager scientists discovered that Ganymede has its own magnetosphere embedded inside Jupiter's large one. JPL manages and controls the Voyager Project for NASA's Office of Space Science.