Asia Tooke and Avery Morgan

 It is the largest satellite in our solar system with three whole layers: an iron, metallic core that generates its magnetic field, a rocky mantle, and its shell, which is chiefly composed of ice.  There is some Oxygen in the atmosphere, but it’s too thin to support life.  It’s lumpy! This means that there are probably rock formations beneath the ice.

Ganymede’s Bright Limb Galileo Regio’s furrowed region

 It’s forty percent cratered area, and sixty percent lightly grooved terrain from tensional faulting or release of water beneath the surface. Some grooves are up to 700 m high. The dark cratered area is probably the original crust of the satellite.  The craters are flat, probably because of the soft, icy ground.  Galileo Regio is the largest area on Ganymede.

Khensu Crater Grooved terrain

 Galileo, at first, called the moons numerically after the Medici family. In the mid-1800’s, Ganymede as well as the other Galilean moons were renamed so as to avoid confusion that could arise with naming the moons numerically.  Ganymede in Greek mythology was a very pretty boy that was disguised as an eagle by Zeus and brought to Mount Olympus to be the cupbearer of the Gods.