Skip to main content

NASA’s Juno spacecraft to investigate Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io

NASA’s Juno spacecraft is famous for the beautiful images of Jupiter it regularly captures using its JunoCam instrument, and its research into Jupiter’s strange atmosphere. But recently the spacecraft has also been investigating Jupiter’s moon, like the icy Europa or the largest moon in our solar system, Ganymede.

Now, Juno will begin an investigation of the intriguing volcanic moon Io. The spacecraft is set to perform a series of nine flybys of Io beginning on December 15, coming within 930 miles of the moon’s surface.

NASA’s Juno mission captured this infrared view of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on July 5, 2022, when the spacecraft was about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away. This infrared image was derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno. In this image, the brighter the color the higher the temperature recorded by JIRAM.
NASA’s Juno mission captured this infrared view of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on July 5, 2022, when the spacecraft was about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away. This infrared image was derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno. In this image, the brighter the color the higher the temperature recorded by JIRAM. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

This series of flybys is part of Juno’s extended mission to study Jupiter’s moons. “The team is really excited to have Juno’s extended mission include the study of Jupiter’s moons. With each close flyby, we have been able to obtain a wealth of new information,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement. “Juno sensors are designed to study Jupiter, but we’ve been thrilled at how well they can perform double duty by observing Jupiter’s moons.”

Io is of particular interest because it is the most volcanic place in the solar system, and it also has the highest density and strongest surface gravity of any moon. Previous research has shown it has over 400 active volcanoes, which are powered by tidal forces from Jupiter and its other moons creating friction that heats its interior. Previous observations from Juno captured the infrared image above, showing hot spots across the moon’s surface.

Juno will study the way that Io’s volcanic activity interacts with Jupiter’s magnetosphere, as the planet has a powerful magnetic field surrounding it that interacts with its moons. Juno’s observations of the moons are also paving the way for future missions to study these objects in more depth, like the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moon Explorer or JUICE, and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Europa.

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
What the JUICE spacecraft is hoping to learn about Jupiter’s icy moons
Artist's impression of the JUICE spacecraft exploring Jupiter and its giant moon Ganymede.

Tomorrow will see the launch of the JUICE spacecraft, which will travel to the Jupiter system to investigate several of the moons there. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, from the European Space Agency (ESA), will investigate three of Jupiter's biggest moons, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, and will discover whether these distant, icy worlds could be habitable.

These moons could be potentially habitable even though they are very far from the sun as they are thought to host oceans of liquid water beneath thick, icy crusts. Evidence from previous missions which visited or passed by the Jupiter system has shown what appear to be plumes of water erupting from the surface of Europa, giving strong evidence that there may be a whole watery world beneath 10 to 15 miles of ice.

Read more
Hubble sees the changing seasons on Jupiter and Uranus
[Jupiter: left] - The forecast for Jupiter is for stormy weather at low northern latitudes. A prominent string of alternating storms is visible, forming a ‘vortex street’ as some planetary astronomers call it. [Uranus: right] - Uranus’s north pole shows a thickened photochemical haze that looks similar to the smog over cities. Several little storms can be seen near the edge of the polar haze boundary. Note: The planets do not appear in this image to scale.

Our planet isn't the only place in the solar system with dramatic weather changes. Other planets in the solar system also experience seasons, depending on their distance from the sun, and that affects their climates. One of the many jobs of the Hubble Space Telescope is to monitor the changing seasons on other planets, particularly the larger outer planets which aren't so often observed. And this week, scientist have released their newest views of Jupiter and Uranus, taken by Hubble and showing seasonal changes on the two planets.

Jupiter is far from the sun, so most of its heat comes not from outside but from within. Jupiter is thought to have a very high core temperature, which may be a result of how it was formed but could also be topped up by processes inside the planet. As this heat escapes from the planet's interior, it affects its atmosphere which contains multiple layers and has unusual features like geometric storms at its poles.

Read more
NASA picks a commercial partner to visit the far side of the moon
Rendering of Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander delivering NASA’s LuSEE-Night radio telescope to the far side of the Moon.

NASA has big plans for the moon. From sending the first crewed mission to land on its surface in 50 years to setting up a space station in orbit, the agency has multiple missions planned for exploring our planet's satellite. These include partnerships with a number of private companies as well as NASA-developed projects, such as under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program which will contract out the transportation of small payloads to the moon.

This week, NASA announced it has selected the company Firefly Aerospace to develop a commercial lander for the far side of the moon. The lander, called Blue Ghost, will be used to deliver several NASA payloads to the moon, including a radio observation mission which is placed on the far side of the moon to minimize the radio noise coming from Earth. This natural radio quiet zone will let the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night) telescope detect faint radio waves from an early period of the universe known as the cosmic dark ages.

Read more