NASA’s Juno gives aerial views of mountain and lava lake on Io

Scientists on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have remodeled information collected throughout two latest flybys of Io into animations that spotlight two of the Jovian moon’s most dramatic options: a mountain and an nearly glass-smooth lake of cooling lava. Different latest science outcomes from the solar-powered spacecraft embrace updates on Jupiter’s polar cyclones and water abundance.

The brand new findings have been introduced Wednesday, April 16, by Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton throughout a information convention on the European Geophysical Union Basic Meeting in Vienna.

Juno made extraordinarily shut flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting inside about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the floor, acquiring the primary close-up pictures of the moon’s northern latitudes.

“Io is solely suffering from volcanoes, and we caught a couple of of them in motion,” stated Bolton. “We additionally bought some nice close-ups and different information on a 200-kilometer-long (127-mile-long) lava lake known as Loki Patera. There’s superb element exhibiting these loopy islands embedded in the course of a doubtlessly magma lake rimmed with scorching lava. The specular reflection our devices recorded of the lake suggests components of Io’s floor are as {smooth} as glass, paying homage to volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

Maps generated with information collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument reveal Io not solely has a floor that’s comparatively {smooth} in comparison with Jupiter’s different Galilean moons, but additionally has poles which can be colder than center latitudes.

Pole place

Throughout Juno’s prolonged mission, the spacecraft flies nearer to the north pole of Jupiter with every move. This altering orientation permits the MWR instrument to enhance its decision of Jupiter’s northern polar cyclones. The information permits multiwavelength comparisons of the poles, revealing that not all polar cyclones are created equal.

“Maybe most hanging instance of this disparity will be discovered with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” stated Steve Levin, Juno’s venture scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“It’s clearly seen in each infrared and visual mild pictures, however its microwave signature is nowhere close to as sturdy as different close by storms. This tells us that its subsurface construction have to be very completely different from these different cyclones. The MWR crew continues to gather extra and higher microwave information with each orbit, so we anticipate creating a extra detailed 3D map of those intriguing polar storms.”

Jovian water

One of many mission’s main science objectives is to gather information that might assist scientists higher perceive Jupiter’s water abundance. To do that, the Juno science crew is not trying to find liquid water. As a substitute, they need to quantify the presence of oxygen and hydrogen molecules (the molecules that make up water) in Jupiter’s ambiance. An correct estimate is vital to piecing collectively the puzzle of our solar system’s formation.

Jupiter was possible the primary planet to kind, and it comprises many of the gasoline and dust that wasn’t integrated into the sun. Water abundance additionally has vital implications for the gas giant’s meteorology (together with how wind currents stream on Jupiter) and inside construction.

In 1995, NASA’s Galileo probe offered an early dataset on Jupiter’s water abundance through the spacecraft’s 57-minute descent into the Jovian ambiance. However the information created extra questions than solutions, indicating the gas giant’s ambiance was unexpectedly scorching and—opposite to what laptop fashions had indicated—bereft of water.

“The probe did superb science, however its information was to this point afield from our fashions of Jupiter’s water abundance that we thought of whether or not the situation it sampled could possibly be an outlier. However earlier than Juno, we could not affirm,” stated Bolton. “Now, with latest outcomes made with MWR information, we’ve nailed down that the water abundance close to Jupiter’s equator is roughly three to 4 instances the solar abundance when in comparison with hydrogen. This definitively demonstrates that the Galileo probe’s entry web site was an anomalously dry, desert-like area.”

The outcomes help the idea that the throughout formation of our solar system, water-ice materials could have been the supply of the heavy aspect enrichment (chemical components heavier than hydrogen and helium that have been accreted by Jupiter) through the gas giant’s formation and/or evolution. The formation of Jupiter stays puzzling, as a result of Juno outcomes on the core of the gas giant counsel a really low water abundance—a thriller that scientists are nonetheless attempting to type out.

Information through the the rest of Juno’s prolonged mission could assist, each by enabling scientists to match Jupiter’s water abundance close to the polar areas to the equatorial area and by shedding further mild on the construction of the planet’s dilute core.

Throughout Juno’s most up-to-date flyby of Io, on April 9, the spacecraft got here inside about 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) of the moon’s floor. It would execute its 61st flyby of Jupiter on Could 12.