NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a infrared image From JupiterMoon Io at 80,000 km.
In the image, taken on July 5 and released on Wednesday, you can see the shapes of lava flows and lava lakes as bright red spots.
“You can see the volcanic hotspots. We were able to observe throughout the main mission – over 30 orbits – how it changes and evolves,” Scott Boltonsaid the principal investigator for NASA’s Juno spacecraft, at a news conference at the American Geophysical Union Autumn meeting Wednesday.
Io is home to hundreds of volcanoes. NASA discovered. Surprisingly, Bolton said, scientists found more volcanic spots in the polar region than in the equatorial region of the planet.
The Juno space probe has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. After studying the gas giant, Juno flew by Jupiter’s moon Ganymede in 2021 and by Europe earlier this year.
The spacecraft must explore Io, which NASA It is “the most volcanic place in the solar system,” he said, back on Dec. 15. This is the first of nine flights that Juno has planned over the next year and a half.
Scientists hope to collect more data on the moonVolcanoes and their magnetism – which Play a tug-of-war to form Jupiter’s aurora borealis – as they pass by.
“As we watch the volcanoes change and become active and less active, they pull on Jupiter’s massive magnetosphere,” Bolton said Wednesday.
Aurora borealis are colorful displays of light that are not unique to Earth. Jupiter has the brightest aurora borealis in the solar system, according to NASA.
On Earth and Jupiter, auroras occur when charged particles, such as protons or electrons, interact with the magnetic field – known as the magnetosphere – that surrounds the planet. Jupiter’s magnetic field approx 20,000 times stronger from Earth.
The data and information Juno has collected might help inform future missions to study Jupiter’s moons, such as NASA’s Clipper missionwho will investigate whether Europa can sustain life.
This article was originally published by Business Trainee.
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