NASA spacecraft makes closest approach ever to Jupiter’s moon Io, releasing new images of the solar system’s ‘most volcanic world’

A NASA spacecraft has made its closest approach to Jupiter’s moon Io in decades, coming within 930 miles of “the world’s most volcanic surface,” and NASA has released new images of the approach.

According to NASA, the Juno spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. Since then, it has been orbiting Jupiter to learn more about the gas giant and its moons.

Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, is a “turbulent world” that is “strewn with hundreds of volcanoes,” NASA said. Some of these volcanoes erupt so powerfully that they can be seen with telescopes on Earth. It is one of 95 moons orbiting Jupiter, and it exists in a “gravitational tug of war” between nearby moons and Jupiter itself. This creates tidal forces that bend the surface up to 330 feet, according to NASA.

Juno’s flight data near Io has not yet been processed by NASA, but researchers said they are looking for more information about these volcanoes. Some photos of the flyby were posted online.

“Juno’s science team is combining data from this flyby with previous observations to study how Io’s volcanoes change,” said Juno’s principal investigator, San Antonio, Texas. Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute said in a NASA news release. “We’re looking at changes in the frequency, brightness and heat of eruptions, the shape of lava flows, and how Io’s activity is related to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”

All three cameras on board the spacecraft were set to be active during the flyby. One of his cameras, called the “Jupiter Infrared Auroral Mapper,” used infrared instruments to record the heat signatures emanating from Io’s volcanoes. A second camera, called the Stellar Reference Unit, will capture high-resolution surface images, and what NASA calls JunoCam will “capture visible-light color images,” resulting in images similar to satellite photographs. The photo posted online by NASA was taken with his JunoCam.

The spacecraft will pass Io again on February 3, bringing it once again within 930 miles of the moon’s surface. The spacecraft will then pass in front of Io every other orbit, but gradually move away, resulting in a total of 18 flybys during Io’s entire mission to Jupiter, NASA said.

“Two flybys in December and February revealed that Juno was able to determine the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, whether there is an ocean of magma beneath the crust, and the pressure on the beleaguered moon that is relentlessly squeezing the beleaguered moon. “We plan to investigate the importance of tidal forces from Jupiter,” Bolton said.