2023-12-28 13:15:03
This image of Jupiter’s moon Io taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft captures a plume of material ejected from the Prometheus volcano.
Taken at a distance of 12,000 kilometers during the October 15 flyby from 12,000, the closest to date, it has now been released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which operates the mission.
Indicated by the red arrow, the column is barely visible in the darkness below the terminator (the line dividing day and night).
The Juno orbiter has made 56 flybys of Jupiter and documented close encounters with three of the gas giant’s four largest moons.
This Saturday, December 30, the mission will get closer than ever to Io, upon reaching approximately 1,500 kilometers from the surface of the most volcanic world in our solar system, and the step is expected to allow Juno’s instruments to generate a large amount of data.
“By combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno science team is studying how Io’s volcanoes vary,” Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said in a statement. . “We’re looking at how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are.how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is related to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”
A second ultra-close flyby of Io is scheduled for February 3, 2024, in which Juno will again approach to within about 1,500 kilometers of the surface.
The spacecraft has been monitoring Io’s volcanic activity from distances ranging from about 12,000 to more than 100,000 kilometers, and has provided the first views of the moon’s north and south poles. The spacecraft has also performed close flybys of Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede and Europa.
Related news
“With our pair of close flybys in December and February, Juno will investigate the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, If there is a magma ocean beneath its crust and the importance of Jupiter’s tidal forces, which are relentlessly squeezing this tortured moon,” Bolton said.
Now in the third year of its extended mission to investigate the origin of Jupiter, the solar-powered spacecraft will also explore the ring system where some of the gas giant’s inner moons reside.
#NASAs #Juno #spacecraft #captured #volcanic #column #moon