NASA’s Juno Takes Temperature of Jupiter’s Fiery Moon Io

5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) TThe north polar region of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io was captured by NASA’s Juno during the spacecraft’s 57th close pass of the gas giant on Dec. 30, 2023. Data from that flyby and one on Feb.

3, 2024, is helping scientists understand Io’s interior. Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Gerald Eichstädt Lee esta historia en español aquí .  NASA’s Juno mission has provided the first measurements of the temperature below the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io, revealing significant heating within the shallow subsurface of the most volcanically active world in the solar system.

Collected during two close flybys, the data also shows that most of Io’s surface is remarkably smooth and composed of material of very low density. Published Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, these findings break new observational ground for both fiery and icy worlds beyond our planet. Io’s extreme volcanism is powered by tidal heating.

The moon is constantly stretched and squeezed by Jupiter’s immense gravity as it travels its slightly elliptical orbit, generating internal heat output many times greater than Earth’s. Until now, virtually everything known about that heat came from infrared observations, which sense only the temperature of the top surface. The latest findings are derived from data collected by the spacecraft’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument.

“The Juno Microwave Radiometer directly observed Io’s heat output by looking below the surface,” said Scott Bolton, study coauthor and Juno’s principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The surprising discovery that we could see below a rocky moon’s surface has important implications for studying Earth’s volcanoes. ” This map represents data captured by the Microwave Radiometer instrument aboard NASA’s Juno, indicating heat rising from just beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io.

The colors illustrate a distinct temperature gradient across the moon, with the most extreme, localized heat output in red. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/USGS Fire, ice Juno’s Microwave Radiometer was designed by Bolton to peer beneath Jupiter’s cloud tops to investigate the dynamics and composition of the gas giant’s deep atmosphere. 3 to 51 centimeters).

During the mission’s extended phase , the MWR instrument has provided the opportunity to observe three of the planet’s Galilean moons: Ganymede, Europa, and Io. “The technique is novel in that each wavelength explores different depths, providing a new way to characterize the deep atmosphere of giant planets and the subsurface crusts of icy and rocky moons,” said Bolton. ” During flybys on Dec.