In the Solar System · tracked live
Ganymede
The largest moon in the Solar System, wider than Mercury, and the only one with a magnetic field of its own, which means a molten core still stirring. Under the ice there is almost certainly a salt-water ocean, perhaps several layered between ice of different kinds. ESA's JUICE is on its way and is to go into orbit around it in 2034, the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than ours.
- Radius
- 2,631 km
- Around the equator
- 16,532 km
- From the Sun
- 795,415,766 km (-313,503 km/d)
- From the Earth
- 870,287,478 km (-2,167,736 km/d)
- A signal takes
- 48 min
- Goes round
- Jupiter
- Placed to within
- 1,533 km
Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of the date below, changing at the rate beside each.
Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.