Two current flybys of Jupiter’s moon Io by NASA’s Juno spacecraft revealed a few beautiful surprises: a remarkably steep mountain and islands in the midst of a burbling lava lake. The brand new findings had been introduced yesterday by Scott Bolton, the principal investigator of the Juno mission, on the European Geophysical Union’s Common Meeting.
“Io is solely suffering from volcanoes, and we caught just a few of them in motion,” Bolton mentioned in a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory release. “There’s wonderful element displaying these loopy islands embedded in the midst of a probably magma lake rimmed with scorching lava. The specular reflection our devices recorded of the lake suggests components of Io’s floor are as easy as glass, paying homage to volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”
The Io flybys happened in December 2023 and February 2024; Juno got here inside 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the moon’s floor. It imaged Io’s northern latitudes, and a few of these close-up photos had been published earlier this year. The spacecraft has additionally imaged Jupiter’s moon Europa, whose icy floor stands in stark dichotomy to Io’s hellish surroundings. However that imagery pales compared to the visualizations constructed with new Juno information, collected by the spacecraft’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) and its JunoCam imager.
The Juno group nicknamed the just lately visualized mountain “Steeple Mountain.” Although NASA paperwork didn’t state the peak of the construction, Io’s Boosaule Montes is one among its most towering buildings, clocking in at about 10 miles (16 kilometers) tall.
As famous on NASA’s website, Io’s “fixed volcanism and intense radiation make Io an unlikely vacation spot for all times.” Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless a implausible laboratory for researchers attempting to know photo voltaic system evolution. Io’s floor is at all times being renewed, as plains of lava coat the present rock and funky into new layers.
Future information from the Juno mission might assist reveal the abundance of water on Jupiter and the character of the planet’s core. However there’s loads worthwhile to check on Io, which Juno has been orbiting for almost eight years. Juno made its most up-to-date flyby of Io this month, coming inside 10,250 miles (16,500 km) of the moon. Its subsequent flyby is scheduled for Could 12.
Learn extra: How Juno’s Breathtaking Jupiter Images Are Made
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