NASA’s Juno probe makes another close flyby of Io

The Juno spacecraft has revealed some fascinating issues about Jupiter because it started exploring the system on July 4th, 2016. Not solely is it the primary robotic mission to review Jupiter up shut whereas orbiting it for the reason that Galileo spacecraft, which studied the gas giant and its satellites from 1995 to 2003. Juno can be the primary robotic explorer to look under Jupiter’s dense clouds to analyze the planet’s magnetic area, composition, and construction. The information this has produced helps scientists handle questions on how Jupiter fashioned and the origins of the solar system.

Since 2021, the probe has been in an prolonged mission phase, the place it has been making flybys of a few of Jupiter’s largest moons, together with Ganymede, Europa, and Io. Because it passes these satellites, Juno has captured some unbelievable photographs with its fundamental imaging instrument, the JunoCam. On Saturday, February 3, 2024, the Juno spacecraft made one other flyby of Io and took extra fascinating photographs of the volcanic moon and its pockmarked floor. This was the second a part of a twin flyby designed to supply new perception into Io’s volcanic nature and the inside construction of the satellite.

The earlier flyby occurred on December 30, 2023, and (like this newest flyby) introduced the spacecraft inside 1,500 km (930 mi) of Io’s floor. The 2 flybys are the closest that any spacecraft has ever manufactured from Io, breaking the earlier report established by Juno through the flyby that occurred on October 15, 2023, the place the probe reached a minimal distance of 12,000 km (mi) from the moon’s floor. No spacecraft has handed this near Io for the reason that Galileo mission buzzed the volcanic moon greater than 20 years in the past.

As all the time, uncooked photographs captured throughout flybys can be found on the mission’s Southwest Analysis Institute (SwRI) web site, the place folks can add, course of, and colorize them. One explicit picture processed by citizen scientist Emma Wälimäki (see above) exhibits the moon’s darkish aspect was lit by daylight mirrored by Jupiter (aka “Jupitershine”). Different photographs supplied by Juno embrace the numerous infrared photographs that present the numerous active volcanoes on the moon’s floor and even eruptions that had been seen throughout flybys as a result of they occurred on the moon’s darkish aspect.

These photographs are a part of an investigation by scientists to find out if Io’s lively volcanoes are powered by a worldwide magma ocean beneath its floor. Based mostly on present geological fashions, scientists consider this magma ocean outcomes from tidal flexing in Io’s inside attributable to interactions with Jupiter’s highly effective gravity. That is just like what Europa and different icy satellites are believed to expertise, the place tidal flexing results in hydrothermal exercise on the core-mantle boundary that maintains oceans of liquid water within the inside.

As of this text’s publication, the Juno mission has operated for twelve years, 5 months, and twenty-seven days. Per its mission extension, the probe will proceed to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole till September 2025, although this might be prolonged additional. So long as Juno’s solar panel wings (the most important ever deployed) proceed offering energy, the mission will proceed to review the system and handle the basic questions of how Jupiter and its satellites got here to be.