Exploring Io’s volcanic activity via Hubble and Webb telescopes

The 2 strongest space telescopes ever constructed, NASA’s James Webb House Telescope (JWST) and Hubble House Telescope, are about to collect knowledge about essentially the most volcanically physique in your complete solar system, Jupiter’s first Galilean moon, Io.

This knowledge can be utilized in mixture with upcoming flybys of Io by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is presently surveying the Jupiter system and is slated to conduct these flybys later this 12 months and early 2024. The aim of analyzing this small, volcanic moon with these two highly effective telescopes and one orbiting spacecraft is for scientists to realize a greater understanding of how Io’s escaping environment interacts with Jupiter’s surrounding magnetic and plasma atmosphere.

“The timing of this mission is essential,” mentioned Dr. Kurt Retherford, who’s a researcher on the Southwest Analysis Institute (SwRI) and principal investigator of this elaborate science marketing campaign. “Over the subsequent 12 months, Juno will buzz previous Io a number of instances, providing uncommon alternatives to mix in situ and distant observations of this advanced system. We hope to realize new insights into Io’s dramatic volcanism, plasma-moon interactions and the impartial fuel and plasma populations that propagate by means of Jupiter’s huge magnetosphere and set off intense Jovian auroral emissions.”

Requesting observing time on Hubble is completed by means of NASA’s Hubble House Telescope Observing Program and is allotted primarily based on the variety of orbits that Hubble can be requested to finish across the Earth for a science marketing campaign to finish its analysis, with every orbit taking roughly 90 minutes. Usually, massive observing tasks request 75 or extra orbits. This won’t be the primary time Hubble has examined Jupiter, because it has an in depth historical past of finding out the biggest planet within the solar system.

For this marketing campaign, Dr. Retherford and his workforce can be utilizing 122 orbits of Hubble across the Earth to collect knowledge on Io for a total time of 183 observing hours, or simply over 4.25 full orbits of Io round Jupiter, with every orbit taking roughly 42.5 hours. Moreover, JWST will collect knowledge on Io over the course of 4.8 hours, or simply over 10% of 1 full orbit of Io round Jupiter.

Jupiter’s large magnetic subject is comprised of an enormous bubble of charged particles that encircles and swirls across the largest planet within the solar system, of which is comprised primarily of Io’s escaping environment. What has remained a thriller to scientists is the interplay between Io’s environment, floor volatiles, volcanic eruptions, Io’s prolonged impartial clouds, Jupiter’s ionosphere, and the Io Plasma Torus (IPT), and particularly how you can measure and achieve larger insights into it. The IPT is a donut-shaped cloud that encircles Jupiter and is produced from Io’s escaping gases being ionized.

“Most of those supplies do not really escape straight out of the volcanoes however moderately are related to the sublimation of sulfur dioxide frost from Io’s dayside floor,” mentioned Dr. Katherine de Kleer, who’s an assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at Caltech, an skilled in JWST knowledge evaluation, and considered one of a number of co-investigators on this marketing campaign. “The interplay between Io’s environment and the encompassing plasma supplies the escape mechanism for gases launched from the moon’s frozen floor.”

After arriving at Jupiter in July 2016, Juno spent its major science mission finding out Jupiter, together with its inside, aurorae, and large magnetosphere. Juno’s prolonged mission started in August 2021, which is slated to final till September 2025 and has been used to conduct flybys of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. For Io, Juno has already performed flybys in 2022 and earlier this 12 months, with the additional shut flybys for this new marketing campaign being scheduled for December 30, 2023, February 1, 2024, and September 20, 2024.

“The possibility for a holistic approach to Io investigations has not been obtainable since a collection of Galileo spacecraft flybys in 1999-2000 have been supported by Hubble with a prolific 30-orbit marketing campaign,” mentioned Dr. Retherford. “The mix of Juno’s intensive in situ measurements with our remote-sensing observations will undoubtedly advance our understanding of Io’s position in driving coupled phenomena within the Jupiter system.”

As famous, Io is essentially the most volcanically energetic physique in your complete solar system, boasting tons of of volcanoes that discharge lava dozens of kilometers (or miles) into space. Its volcanic activity is the results of tidal heating because the small moon is compressed and stretched by the way more large Jupiter, together with two of the outer moons, Europa and Ganymede. Io’s volcanic exercise was first predicted simply previous to the arrival of NASA’s Voyager 1 in 1979, which confirmed this exercise and imaged the primary indicators of energetic volcanism exterior the Earth.