NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured an infrared image of Jupiter‘s moon Io from 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away.
Within the picture, taken on July 5 and launched on Wednesday, you may see the shapes of lava flows and lava lakes as shiny pink spots.
“You’ll be able to see volcanic hotspots. We have been in a position to monitor over the course of the first mission – over 30 orbits – how this adjustments and evolves,” Scott Bolton, principal investigator for NASA’s Juno spacecraft, stated in a press occasion on the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting on Wednesday.
Io is residence to a whole bunch of volcanoes, NASA has found. Surprisingly, scientists discovered extra volcanic spots within the polar area than within the planet’s equatorial area, Bolton stated.
The area probe Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. After learning the gasoline large, Juno flew by Jupiter’s moon Ganymede in 2021 and by Europa earlier this yr.
The spacecraft is scheduled to discover Io, which NASA says is the “essentially the most volcanic place within the photo voltaic system,” once more on December 15. It is the primary of 9 flybys Juno has deliberate over the subsequent yr and a half.
Scientists hope to collect extra information on the moon‘s volcanoes and its magnetism – which play a “tug of war” to form Jupiter’s auroras – as they fly by.
“As we watch the volcanoes change and get lively and fewer lively, they’re driving Jupiter’s gigantic monster magnetosphere,” Bolton stated on Wednesday.
Auroras are colourful shows of sunshine that aren’t distinctive to Earth. Jupiter has the brightest auroras within the photo voltaic system, in line with NASA.
On each Earth and Jupiter, auroras happen when charged particles, akin to protons or electrons, work together with the magnetic subject – referred to as the magnetosphere – that surrounds a planet. Jupiter’s magnetic subject is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s.
The information and insights Juno gleans may assist inform future missions to check Jupiter’s moons, like NASA’s Clipper mission, which can examine whether or not Europa may assist life.
This text was initially printed by Business Insider.
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