Jupiter's Volcanic Moon Io: 'Raw' Views of Close Flyby | NASA Juno Mission
Just Released: On Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2023, NASA’s
Juno spacecraft made the closest flyby
of Jupiter’s moon Io that any spacecraft has made in over 20 years.
Coming within roughly 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the surface of
the most volcanic world in our solar system, the pass is expected to
allow Juno's instruments to return a high volume of new data from deep space. The orbiter has
now performed 57 flybys of Jupiter and documented close encounters with
three of the gas giant’s four largest moons.
“By
combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno
science team is studying how Io’s volcanoes vary,” said Juno’s
principal investigator, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute
in San Antonio, Texas. “We are looking for how often they erupt, how
bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how
Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in
Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”
A
second ultra-close flyby of Io is scheduled for Feb. 3, 2024, in which
Juno will again come within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the
surface.
The
spacecraft has been monitoring Io’s volcanic activity from distances
ranging from about 6,830 miles (11,000 kilometers) to over 62,100 miles
(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.
“With
our pair of close flybys in December and February, Juno will
investigate the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, whether a
magma ocean exists underneath its crust, and the importance of tidal
forces from Jupiter, which are relentlessly squeezing this tortured
moon,” said Bolton.
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.
Picture This
All
three cameras aboard Juno were active during the Io flyby. The
Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) that takes images in infrared will be collecting the heat signatures emitted by volcanoes and calderas
covering the moon’s surface. The mission’s Stellar Reference Unit (a
navigational star camera that has also provided valuable science) will
obtain the highest-resolution image of the surface to date. And the
JunoCam imager will take visible-light color images.
JunoCam
was included on the spacecraft for the public’s engagement and was
designed to operate for up to eight flybys of Jupiter. The upcoming
flyby of Io will be Juno’s 57th orbit around Jupiter, where the
spacecraft and cameras have endured one of the solar system’s most
punishing radiation environments.
“The
cumulative effects of all that radiation has begun to show on JunoCam
over the last few orbits,” said Ed Hirst, project manager of Juno at
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Pictures from
the last flyby show a reduction in the imager’s dynamic range and the
appearance of ‘striping’ noise. Our engineering team has been working on
solutions to alleviate the radiation damage and to keep the imager
going.”
More Io, Please
After
several months of study and assessment, the Juno team adjusted the
spacecraft’s planned future trajectory to add seven new distant Io
flybys (for a total of 18) to the extended mission plan. After the close
Io pass on Feb. 3, the spacecraft will fly by Io every other orbit,
with each orbit growing progressively more distant: The first will be at
an altitude of about 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) above Io, and the
last will be at about 71,450 miles (115,000 kilometers).
The
gravitational pull of Io on Juno during the Dec. 30, 2023 flyby reduced the spacecraft’s orbit around Jupiter from 38 days to 35 days.
Juno’s orbit will drop to 33 days after the Feb. 3 flyby.
Juno’s new trajectory resulted in Jupiter blocking the Sun
from the spacecraft for about five minutes at the time when the orbiter
is at its closest to the planet—a period called perijove. Although this
will be the first time the solar-powered spacecraft has encountered
darkness since its flyby of Earth in October 2013, the duration will be
too short to affect its overall operation. With the exception of the
Feb. 3 perijove, the spacecraft will encounter solar eclipses like this
during every close flyby of Jupiter from now on through the remainder of
its extended mission that ends in late 2025.
Starting
in April 2024, the spacecraft will carry out a series of occultation
experiments that use Juno’s Gravity Science experiment to probe
Jupiter’s upper atmospheric makeup, which provides key information on
the planet’s shape and interior structure.
More About the Mission
JPL,
a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission
for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest
Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers
Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the
spacecraft.
Learn more about NASA's Juno mission:
Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image Release Date: Dec. 30, 2023
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