NASA's Juno Mission Makes Its Closest-Ever Approach To Jupiter’s Moon lo; See Stunning Image

“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.”

NASA said the spacecraft has been monitoring Io’s volcanic activity from distances ranging from about 6,830 miles (11,000 kilometres) to over 62,100 miles (100,000 kilometres), 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.

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes, some erupting lava fountains dozens of miles (or kilometers) high. Io is caught in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's massive gravity and the smaller but precisely timed pulls from two neighbouring moons that orbit farther from Jupiter—Europa and Ganymede.

Since it arrived at Jupiter in 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been probing beneath the dense, forbidding clouds encircling the giant planet – the first orbiter to peer so closely. It seeks answers to questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our solar system, and giant planets across the cosmos.