Larry Soderblom introduced new photographs of the satellites. Io still showed no craters, even at high resolution. The craters that “should” have been on Io were on Ganymede and Callisto. Ganymede not only had craters, it had fault lines as well. “There is transverse motion along these faults. Things get offset, apparently, for hundreds of kilometers. So it’s the first time we’ve seen major kinds of transverse motion on the surface of another planet.” Ganymede, in effect, had shown evidence of having its own icy version of the San Andreas Fault.

[Illustration: Amalthea was thought to be the innermost satellite of Jupiter until Voyager 2 discovered tiny Adrastea (1979J1). The Voyager 1 camera revealed Amalthea as an irregular dark reddish object with dimensions of 270 × 160 kilometers. These three images have resolutions of (b) 25 kilometers; (c) 13 kilometers; (d) 8 kilometers. [260-503]]

Voyage to Jupiter — Part 85

[Illustration: Observation geometry for Amalthea]

Voyage to Jupiter — Part 85

Although Callisto was heavily covered with craters up to 200 kilometers in diameter, Dr. Soderblom commented on the absence of larger impact basins. Perhaps there was one in the huge bullseye feature; however, it was not a “standard” looking basin like those on the Moon. Callisto was “extremely smooth and free of any relief. The structure [the bullseye], if impact caused, shows no relief; the limb does not show any relief; maybe it’s possible that Callisto cannot support relief.” By the next day, the geologists on the Imaging Team were becoming more convinced that the Callisto “bullseye” was the frozen remnant of an enormous impact into Callisto’s surface. Since Callisto is composed in large part of water and has an icy crust, the team speculated that any raised features created by the impact would eventually “slide” back into the surface, “and the ripple marks from the shock wave caused by the impact were frozen” into the surface.

Voyage to Jupiter — Part 85

[Illustration: Callisto was the last of the Galilean satellites to be studied by Voyager 1. In this photo, taken March 5 from a distance of 1.2 million kilometers, with a resolution of about 25 kilometers, the extensive cratering of the surface began to be apparent. Near the upper left edge is the large impact basin Valhalla; the numerous light spots are craters 100 kilometers or more in diameter. This is the same side of Callisto that was photographed at higher resolution during the Voyager 1 flyby of the satellite a day later. [P-21284C]]