NASA’s Juno mission will come closer to Jupiter’s moon Io on Saturday, December 30, than any spacecraft has in nearly 20 years.
The flyby will bring Juno within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system. This will allow the spacecraft to look at Io in detail while collecting a trove of hot data. It’s close, but not the closest view ever of a spacecraft: That record belongs to NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which hovered just 181 kilometers (112 miles) above Io’s south pole in 2001.
Juno was launched on August 5, 2011, and reached gas giant Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, on July 4, 2016, after a journey of 1.7 billion miles (2.8 billion kilometers). Since then, the Jupiter orbiter has passed by the gas planet 56 times, collecting data about itself and its moons, and is about to embark on the next one.
“By combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno science team is examining how Io’s volcanoes are changing,” Southwest Research Institute scientist and Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton said in a statement. said. “We’re 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 linked to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”
Relating to: Jupiter’s moon Io is covered with active volcanoes. We now have their 1st map
Now, in the third year of its extended mission, with its main mission ending in July 2021, Juno will make another flyby of Io on February 3, 2024, when it comes within about 930 miles (1,500 km) of the volcanic rock. This is the surface of the Jovian world.
The flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024 will add to the wealth of information scientists have gathered about Io thanks to Juno, which monitors volcanic activity from distances ranging from 11,000 km to 62,100 miles. (100,000km). During the study, the NASA spacecraft also provided researchers with the first images of Io’s north and south poles.
Why investigate Jupiter’s “tortured moon” Io?
About the size of Earth’s moon, Io’s surface is dotted with hundreds of actively erupting volcanoes that can shoot lava dozens of kilometers into the thin, waterless atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon.
Jupiter’s innermost Galilean moon Io, one of Jupiter’s four large moons, is believed to be extremely volcanic due to the gravitational influence of the gas giant planet and its three other Galilean moons (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto).
This produces tidal forces strong enough to cause Io’s surface to rise and fall as much as 330 feet (100 meters), triggering extreme volcanism.
“With flybys in December and February, Juno will investigate the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, whether a magma ocean exists beneath its crust, and the significance of the tidal forces from Jupiter that relentlessly squeeze this tortured moon.” Bolton added.
Io’s volcanism needs to be understood because it likely has an impact on the broader Jovian system. For example, volcanic particles escaping from Io’s atmosphere are thought to be trapped by Jupiter’s magnetic field, forming a hot plasma donut around the gas giant planet.
How is Juno investigating Io?
All three of Juno’s cameras will be active during Io’s flyby this weekend. The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) will collect information about the heat signature of the volcanic moon, locating volcanoes and calderas during the Jovian moon. Meanwhile, the navigational star camera Stellar Reference Unit will collect the highest-resolution images of Io’s volcano-riddled surface ever collected.
Finally, JunoCam, which is included in Juno’s suite of tools to increase public engagement, will capture full-color visible-light images of the volcanic moon.
JunoCam is designed to last only eight flybys of Jupiter, making the images of Io it will collect during this 57th flyby even more remarkable. All three cameras and the Juno spacecraft itself had to brave and withstand the harshest radiation environment around Jupiter, arguably the harshest radiation environment in the solar system, except for the Solar System, to continue this remarkable science mission. However, this punishment began to show itself.
“The cumulative effects of all this radiation are starting to show up on JunoCam over the last few orbits,” said Ed Hirst, Juno project manager. “Images from the last flight show a reduction in the imager’s dynamic range and the appearance of ‘banding’ noise. Our engineering team is working on solutions to mitigate radiation damage and keep the imager operational.”
Following Juno’s Io orbit in February 2024, the NASA orbiter will pass over the Jovian moon on each of its subsequent orbits of Jupiter, but each will then move further away from Io’s volcanic surface.
The first flight after February will be at an altitude of about 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) above Io, while the last one will bring the NASA spacecraft to within about 71,450 miles (115,000 kilometers) of the volcanic moon.
Juno will also begin to experience periods when Jupiter eclipses the sun, blocking its access to solar energy and causing it to experience darkness for the first time since leaving Earth.
RELATED STORIES:
— Massive volcanic eruption that lasts for months stirs up Jupiter’s moon Io
— See Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io glowing red-hot in incredible images from NASA’s Juno probe
— Juno: A Long Look at Jupiter
This is not expected to affect Juno’s operation, and from April 2024 the spacecraft will use these occultation events to assist the Gravitational Science Experiment to investigate the composition of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and gather information about the planet’s shape and interior. structure.
Juno’s extended mission exploring the Jovian system will last until September 2025, when NASA says the spacecraft will reach the end of its life and likely crash into the gas giant’s atmosphere on purpose.