AstronomyNASA's Juno to get close look at Jupiter's volcanic...

NASA’s Juno to get close look at Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on Dec. 30

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This picture revealing the north polar area of the Jovian moon Io was taken on October 15 by NASA’s Juno. Three of the mountain peaks seen within the higher a part of picture, close to the day-night dividing line, have been noticed right here for the primary time. Credit score: Picture information: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Picture processing by Ted Stryk

NASA’s Juno spacecraft will on Saturday, Dec. 30, make the closest flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io that any spacecraft has made in over 20 years. Coming inside roughly 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the floor of probably the most volcanic world in our solar system, the go is predicted to permit Juno devices to generate a firehose of knowledge.

“By combining information from this flyby with our earlier observations, the Juno science group is finding out how Io’s volcanoes range,” stated Juno’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Analysis Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “We’re searching for how usually they erupt, how vibrant and sizzling they’re, how the form of the lava movement modifications, and the way Io’s exercise is linked to the movement of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”

A second ultra-close flyby of Io is scheduled for Feb. 3, 2024, during which Juno will once more come inside about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the floor.

The spacecraft has been monitoring Io’s volcanic exercise from distances starting from about 6,830 miles (11,000 kilometers) to over 62,100 miles (100,000 kilometers), and has offered the primary views of the moon’s north and south poles. The spacecraft has additionally carried out shut flybys of Jupiter’s icy moons, Ganymede and Europa.

“With our pair of shut flybys in December and February, Juno will examine the supply of Io’s huge volcanic exercise, whether or not a magma ocean exists beneath its crust, and the significance of tidal forces from Jupiter, that are relentlessly squeezing this tortured moon,” stated Bolton.

Now within the third yr of its prolonged mission to analyze the origin of Jupiter, the solar-powered spacecraft may even discover the ring system the place among the gas giant’s interior moons reside.

NASA's Juno to get close look at Jupiter's volcanic moon Io on Dec. 30
This JunoCam picture of Jupiter’s moon Io captures a plume of fabric ejected from the (unseen) volcano Prometheus. Indicated by the crimson arrow, the plume is simply seen within the darkness under the terminator (the road dividing day and night time). The picture was taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on October 15. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Image this

All three cameras aboard Juno shall be energetic throughout the Io flyby. The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), which takes photos in infrared, shall be amassing the warmth signatures emitted by volcanoes and calderas protecting the moon’s floor. The mission’s Stellar Reference Unit (a navigational star digital camera that has additionally offered priceless science) will get hold of the highest-resolution picture of the floor so far. And the JunoCam imager will take visible-light coloration photos.

JunoCam was included on the spacecraft for the general public’s engagement and was designed to function for as much as eight flybys of Jupiter. The upcoming flyby of Io shall be Juno’s 57th orbit round Jupiter, the place the spacecraft and cameras have endured one of many solar system‘s most punishing radiation environments.

“The cumulative results of all that radiation has begun to point out on JunoCam over the previous few orbits,” stated Ed Hirst, undertaking supervisor of Juno at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Footage from the final flyby present a discount within the imager’s dynamic vary and the looks of ‘striping’ noise. Our engineering group has been engaged on options to alleviate the radiation injury and to maintain the imager going.”

Extra Io, please

After a number of months of examine and evaluation, the Juno group adjusted the spacecraft’s deliberate future trajectory so as to add seven new distant Io flybys (for a total of 18) to the prolonged mission plan. After the shut Io go on Feb. 3, the spacecraft will fly by Io each different orbit, with every orbit rising progressively extra distant: The primary shall be at an altitude of about 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) above Io, and the final shall be at about 71,450 miles (115,000 kilometers).

The gravitational pull of Io on Juno throughout the Dec. 30 flyby will scale back the spacecraft’s orbit round Jupiter from 38 days to 35 days. Juno’s orbit will drop to 33 days after the Feb. 3 flyby.

After that, Juno’s new trajectory will lead to Jupiter blocking the sun from the spacecraft for about 5 minutes on the time when the orbiter is at its closest to the planet, a interval known as perijove. Though this would be the first time the solar-powered spacecraft has encountered darkness since its flyby of Earth in October 2013, the length shall be too brief to have an effect on its general operation.

Apart from the Feb. 3 perijove, the spacecraft will encounter solar eclipses like this throughout each shut flyby of Jupiter any longer by way of the rest of its prolonged mission, which ends in late 2025.

Beginning in April 2024, the spacecraft will perform a sequence of occultation experiments that use Juno’s Gravity Science experiment to probe Jupiter’s higher atmospheric make-up, which offers key data on the planet’s form and inside construction.

Quotation:
NASA’s Juno to get shut take a look at Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on Dec. 30 (2023, December 29)
retrieved 29 December 2023
from https://phys.org/information/2023-12-nasa-juno-jupiter-volcanic-moon.html

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