An amazing image from NASA's probe shows lava on one of Jupiter's moons
NASA's Juno spacecraft captured an infrared image of Jupiter's moon, Io, from 50,000 miles away.
In the image, taken on July 5 and released on Wednesday, December 14, the shapes of lava flows and lava lakes can be seen as bright red spots.
"The team is very excited that the expanded Juno mission will include studying Jupiter's moons," Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the Juno spacecraft program at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a press release. With each close flight, we were able to obtain a wealth of new information.”
"Juno's sensors are designed to study Jupiter, but we are pleased with how well they can do double duty when observing Jupiter's moons," he added.
NASA considers Io to be home to hundreds of volcanoes, and the most volcanically active place in the solar system. Surprisingly, Bolton said, scientists found more volcanic spots in the polar region than in the planet's equatorial region.
The Juno space probe has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. After studying the gas giant (Jupiter), Juno flew near Jupiter's moon Ganymede in 2021 and next to Europa earlier this year.
Scientists hope to collect more data about Io's volcanoes and magnetism, which play the role of "tug of war" to form Jupiter's aurora borealis, during Juno's flyby.
"As we watch the volcanoes change and become more or less active, they drive Jupiter's giant monstrous magnetosphere," Bolton said Wednesday.
Aurora borealis are colorful displays of light that are not unique to Earth. According to NASA, Jupiter has the brightest aurora borealis in the solar system.
On both Earth and Jupiter, aurorae occur when charged particles, such as protons or electrons, interact with the magnetic field - known as the magnetosphere - that surrounds the planet.
It is noteworthy that the magnetic field of Jupiter is about 20 thousand times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth.
The data and insights Juno gathers could help inform future missions to study Jupiter's moons, such as NASA's Clipper mission, which will investigate whether Europa could support life.
Source: websites