Jupiter’s moon Io seen on October 16th
NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology/SwRI/MSSS/Brian Swift/CC BY
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured the best image in decades of Jupiter’s moon Io as it passed by at a distance of 11,645 kilometers on October 16.
Io is slightly larger than Earth’s moon and is speckled with more than 400 active volcanoes. The shadows of these mountains, some of which are thought to be higher than Mount Everest, can be seen in the latest images in highlighted colors.
Closer images of Io are expected to be released in the coming months, as Juno’s current orbit brings it closer and closer to the moon with each pass. It is expected to plummet to within 1,500 km of Io’s surface in February 2024.
The spacecraft was launched in 2011, entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016, and has been studying Jupiter and its many moons ever since.
Jupiter has 95 known moons, and the four largest (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) are known as the Galilean moons. Juno flew within 352 kilometers of Europe last year, providing the closest images in more than 20 years.
In 2021, it performed a similar flyby of Ganymede, which is itself larger than Mercury, providing similarly detailed images and sensor data of the moon’s magnetic field.
Before this, the best images of Io were taken It’s from NASA’s Galileo orbiter, which was launched on the Space Shuttle in 1989 and took six years to travel to Jupiter. It spent eight years orbiting the planet and its moons, photographing Io in 2001.
Galileo finally performed a controlled collision in 2003 to avoid contaminating Jupiter’s moons. It is believed that some of the moons contain liquid water and therefore may harbor life. Juneau faces a similar fate. Juno is scheduled to deorbit toward Jupiter in September 2025.
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