The second of two flybys added to the trove of data scientists have about Jupiter's volcanic moons. From the report: On Saturday, NASA's Juno spacecraft took a second close-up of Io, Jupiter's third largest moon and the most volcanic world in the solar system. The Juno spacecraft, which arrived at the gas giant in 2016, is on a long-term mission to explore Jupiter's rings and moons. The latest flyby, which complements the mission's first approach on Dec. 30, showed even more of the moon's hellish landscape.
The intense release of sulfur and additional compounds from Io gives the moon its orange, yellow, and blue hues. The process is similar to what happens around volcanoes in Hawaii and geysers in Yellowstone National Park, said Scott Bolton, a physicist at the Southwest Research Institute who leads the Juno mission. “That's what Io must be like — on steroids,” he said. He added that he could probably smell those places as well.
The latest shots of Juneau, released on Sunday, are already ripe for discovery. Dr. Bolton witnessed what appeared to be a double plume ejecting into space on Io's surface. This was something Juno had never captured before. Other scientists have noticed new lava flows and changes in familiar terrain discovered by past space missions, including the Galileo spacecraft, which flew close to Io multiple times in the 1990s and 2000s. “That's the beauty of Io,” said Brigham Young University planetary scientist Jani Radebaugh. Although he is not part of the Juno mission, he is working with the team on Io's observations. Unlike our moon, where time remains frozen, Radebaugh said, “Io changes every day, every minute, every second.”
