NASA ’s Juno wing by the niggling volcanic Sun Myung Moon Io multiple meter between December 2023 andFebruary 2024 . It was the unaired approaching in decades and provided scientists with the best understanding yet of what powers this moon . Io is one of the other few berth in the Solar System with participating vent spue lava – and Jupiter is to pick .
Io is the nearest largest Moon to Jupiter . It is in an elliptical orbit around the satellite , going around the gas whale once every 42.5 hours , it is also in vibrancy with the other large Moon . Io is being squished and pulled like no other world . Its volcanism was happen upon thanks to the Voyager 1 spacecraft by Linda Morabito of NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory back in 1979 .
“ Since Morabito ’s discovery , planetary scientists have wonder how the volcano were fed from the lava underneath the surface , ” Scott Bolton , Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio , say in astatement . “ Was there a shallow ocean of white - blistering magma fuel the volcano , or was their source more localized ? We have sex data from Juno ’s two very close flybys could give us some penetration on how this tortured moon in reality shape . ”
If the planet has a fluent ocean underneath , its yellow crust caked in sulfur , it will be more squishable compare to a more solid object , like a tennis testicle compared to a baseball . This is what theJunoobservations aimed to straighten out .
“ This ceaseless flexing creates immense free energy , which literally melts portions of Io ’s interior , ” order Bolton . “ If Io has a global magma ocean , we knew the signature tune of its tidal deformation would be much larger than a more rigid , mostly self-colored Department of the Interior . Thus , depending on the upshot from Juno ’s probing of Io ’s solemnity field , we would be capable to enjoin if a global magma ocean was hiding beneath its surface . ”
Juno ’s data fuse with previous observance of Io suggests that the volcano are not cause by a global magma ocean . The lunar month is a lot more solid than that . This has implication foricy moonslike Europa and Enceladus , but also for much more distant worlds .
“ Juno ’s discovery that tidal effect do not always create global magma oceans does more than instigate us to rethink what we know about Io ’s interior , ” said lead source Ryan Park , a Juno carbon monoxide gas - investigator and supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group at JPL . “ It has implications for our agreement of other moons , such as Enceladus and Europa , and even exoplanets and super - earth . Our new findings provide an opportunity to rethink what we know about planetary formation and development . ”
The study was present at theAmerican Geophysical Union ’s one-year meetingand is published in the journalNature .
