Juno space probe shows aerial views of Io’s mountain and lava lake :: NASANET

Scientists on NASA’s Juno mission have transformed data collected during two recent flybys of Io into an animation that highlights two of Jupiter’s moon’s most impressive features: a mountain and a nearly crystalline, cold lava lake. Other recent scientific findings from the solar-powered spacecraft include updates on Jupiter’s polar cyclones and water abundance.

The new results were presented by Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton during a press conference at the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union in Vienna.

Juno made extremely close flybys in December 2023 and February 2024, coming within about 1,500 kilometers of the surface and capturing the first close-up images of the moon’s northern latitudes.

“Io is just littered with volcanoes, and we caught some of them in action,” Bolton said. “We also got excellent close-up images and other data from a 200-kilometer-long lava lake called Loki Patera. There are amazing details showing islands built into the middle of a potentially magmatic lake surrounded by hot lava. Specular reflection captured by our instruments The lake suggests that parts of Io’s surface are smooth as glass, reminiscent of the obsidian glass created by a volcano on Earth.”

Maps created from data collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) show that Io not only has a relatively smooth surface compared to Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, but also has poles that are cooler than those at mid-latitudes.

During Juno’s extended mission, the spacecraft gets closer to Jupiter’s north pole with each pass. This change in orientation allows the MWR instrument to improve the resolution of Jupiter’s north polar cyclones. The data allows poles to be compared at different wavelengths, showing that not all polar cyclones are the same.

“Perhaps the most dramatic example of this discrepancy can be found in the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is not as strong as other nearby storms. This tells us that its underground structure must be very different from those of these other cyclones. “MWR continues to collect more and more microwave data with each orbit, so we look forward to developing a more detailed 3D map of these intriguing polar storms.”

Water of Jupiter

One of the mission’s main scientific goals is to collect data that will help scientists better understand the abundance of water on Jupiter. To achieve this, the Juno science team is not looking for liquid water. Instead, they aim to quantify the presence of oxygen and hydrogen molecules (the molecules that make up water) in Jupiter’s atmosphere. An accurate assessment is essential to piecing together the mystery of the formation of our solar system.

Jupiter was probably the first planet to form and contains most of the gas and dust that was not incorporated into the Sun. The abundance of water also has important implications for the gas giant’s meteorology (including how wind currents flow on Jupiter) and its internal structure. .

In 1995, NASA’s Galileo probe provided a preliminary set of data on the amount of water on Jupiter during the spacecraft’s 57-minute descent into Jupiter’s atmosphere. But the data raised more questions than answers, indicating that the gas giant’s atmosphere was unexpectedly hot and, contrary to what computer models had shown, devoid of water.

“The probe did amazing scientific work, but its data was so far from our models of water content on Jupiter that we wondered whether the site where it sampled might be a blowout. But we couldn’t confirm that before Juno,” Bolton said. “Now, thanks to recent results from MWR data, we have determined that water near Jupiter’s equator is about three to four times as abundant as hydrogen in sunlight. This conclusively demonstrates that the Galileo probe’s entry site was abnormally dry. , desert region.

The results support the view that during the formation of our Solar System, water ice material may have been the source of heavy element enrichment during formation and/or evolution. Jupiter’s formation remains mysterious, with findings from Juno in the gas giant’s core suggesting very low water content – a mystery scientists are still trying to unravel.

Data collected during the remainder of Juno’s extended mission could help because it will allow scientists to compare Jupiter’s water content near the polar regions with the equatorial region and shed further light on the structure of the planet’s tenuous core.

During Juno’s final flyby of Io, on April 9, the spacecraft came within 16,500 kilometers of the lunar surface. On May 12, it will make its 61st flyby of Jupiter.