NASA’s Juno mission scientists have used complicated information collected throughout two flybys of Jupiter’s third largest moon Io to create animations that spotlight this moon’s most dramatic options. Io is slightly bit bigger than the planet Earth and can also be house to a mountain with a clean lake of lava. Lava lakes like Io’s Loki Patera have a cooling floor crust that slowly thickens till it turns into denser than the underlying magma. It then sinks and pulls in the close by crust.
First launched in 2011, Juno arrived at our photo voltaic system’s largest planet in 2016 with a mission to discover the Jovian system. It has 95 recognized moons and its 4 largest–Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto–are known as the Galilean moons. Io is most volcanically energetic.
This animation is an artist’s idea of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io, made utilizing information from the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. With a number of islands in its inside, Loki is a despair full of magma and rimmed with molten lava. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS.
“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton stated in an announcement. “We also got some great close-ups and other data on a 200-kilometer-long [127-mile-long] lava lake called Loki Patera. There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”
The observations had been introduced April 16 through the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.
[Related: See the most volcanic world in our solar system in new NASA images.]
Juno carried out very shut flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting inside 930 miles of the floor. The spacecraft obtained first close-up photographs of Io’s northern latitudes. Maps created with information collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument present that Io has a floor that’s extra clean in comparison with Jupiter’s different Galilean moons, but additionally has poles which can be colder than their center latitudes.
Created utilizing information collected by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno throughout flybys in December 2023 and February 2024, this animation is an artist’s idea of a characteristic on the Jovian moon Io that the mission science group nicknamed “Steeple Mountain.” CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Mountains and polar cyclones
With each move, Juno flies nearer to the north pole of Jupiter. Changing the spacecraft’s orientation permits the MWR instrument to enhance its decision of Jupiter’s northern polar cyclones. These storms on the high of the fuel large can attain wind speeds of 220 miles per hour and the info collected by Juno reveals that not all polar cyclones are created equal.
“Perhaps [the] most striking example of this disparity can be found with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” Steve Levin, Juno’s challenge scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stated in an announcement. “It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms. This tells us that its subsurface structure must be very different from these other cyclones. The MWR team continues to collect more and better microwave data with every orbit, so we anticipate developing a more detailed 3D map of these intriguing polar storms.”
Just how a lot water is on Jupiter? An enduring thriller
One of Juno’s major science objectives is to gather information that may assist astronomers higher perceive Jupiter’s water abundance. However, the group isn’t in search of liquid water. Instead, they’re learning Jupiterl’s ambiance to quantify the presence of the molecules that make up water–oxygen and hydrogen. According to NASA, an correct estimate of oxygen and hydrogen molecules current in Jupiter’s ambiance is essential to unlocking among the underlying mysteries of how our photo voltaic system shaped.
Jupiter was seemingly the primary planet to kind roughly 4.5 billion years in the past. It additionally comprises many of the fuel and mud that wasn’t integrated into the solar when the photo voltaic system shaped. Water abundance additionally has vital implications for Jupiter’s meteorology and inner construction.
[Related: Juno finally got close enough to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to measure its depth.]
In 1995, NASA’s Galileo probe supplied early information on the quantity of water on Jupiter, however the information created extra questions than solutions. It confirmed that the fuel large’s ambiance was unexpectedly sizzling and really disadvantaged of water—opposite to what laptop fashions had initially indicated.
“The probe did amazing science, but its data was so far afield from our models of Jupiter’s water abundance that we considered whether the location it sampled could be an outlier. But before Juno, we couldn’t confirm,” stated Bolton. “Now, with recent results made with MWR data, we have nailed down that the water abundance near Jupiter’s equator is roughly three to four times the solar abundance when compared to hydrogen. This definitively demonstrates that the Galileo probe’s entry site was an anomalously dry, desert-like region.”
[Related: Jupiter’s icy ocean worlds could be cool travel destinations in the future.]
The new outcomes assist the concept someday through the formation of our solar-system, water-ice materials might have been the supply of heavy component enrichment. These are chemical components which can be heavier than hydrogen and helium that Jupiter amassed. The planet’s formation stays puzzling, as a result of Juno’s outcomes on the core of the fuel large recommend that there’s very low water abundance. How considerable H20 is on the fuel large stays a thriller that the Juno mission might doubtlessly resolve.
What’s subsequent for Juno
Data through the reminder of Juno’s mission might assist decide how a lot water is on Jupiter in two methods. It might allow scientists to match Jupiter’s water abundance close to the polar areas to the equatorial area. It additionally might shed extra gentle on the construction of the planet’s dilute liquid core.
Juno’s most up-to-date flyby of Io was on April 9 and the spacecraft got here inside about 10,250 miles of the moon’s floor. Its 61st flyby of Jupiter is scheduled for May 12 and it’ll proceed to discover the planet and its moons via September 2025.