Credits: Johns Hopkins APL/University of Arizona/Mike Yakovlev. “Juno sensors are designed to study Jupiter, but we’ve been thrilled at how well they can perform double duty by observing Jupiter’s moons. The proposed Io Volcano Observer (IVO) mission would aim to understand how tidal heat is generated, lost and drives the evolution of Jupiter’s moon Io all critical clues to the formation of worlds across the cosmos. Bolton is the principal investigator for Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. With each close flyby, we have been able to obtain a wealth of new information,” said Scott Bolton in the NASA release. “The team is really excited to have Juno’s extended mission include the study of Jupiter’s moons. NASA extended the mission in 2018 and again in 2021, with a new scheduled completion date of September 2025. The original mission saw Juno taking 35 orbits-each of which lasted approximately 53 days-around the planet, collecting 375 gigabytes of data on Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior along the way. NASA’s Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 and took five years to reach Jupiter. Jonathan Nichols and Stan Cowley were co-authors the paper, and after analyzing data from Juno, they argued that volcanic emissions from Io interact with and travel along Jupiter’s magnetic field to the planet’s poles, where they create auroras. These volcanic hotspots on Io are noteworthy because they are thought to contribute to the auroras on Jupiter’s poles, as discussed in research from the University of Leicester published earlier this year in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. Io has one of the most dynamic atmospheres in the solar system due in part to an orbital resonance with Europa and Ganymede that causes intense tidal. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
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