Although not very large compared to its neighboring moons, Jupiter’s Io is highly active, with hundreds of volcanoes spewing plumes of lava. Dozens of miles According to NASA, two eruptions occurred 200 meters above Io’s surface. Infrared technology on board the space agency’s Juno spacecraft provided valuable data on the mysterious events taking place beneath Io’s surface in February. Researchers have provided insight into the matter. paper It was released last week.
From about 2,400 miles away, the spacecraft’s Jupiter Infrared Auroral Mapping instrument (JIRAM) “revealed that Io’s entire surface is covered by lava lakes in caldera-like formations,” explained Juno co-investigator Alessandro Mura of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. On Earth, calderas are craters formed by the collapse of volcanoes. Io’s diameter is about a quarter of Earth’s and slightly larger than Earth’s Moon.
“In the areas of Io’s surface where we have the most complete data, we estimate that about 3 percent of it is covered by one of these lava lakes,” Mura said. Juno’s JIRAM tool was provided by Italy’s space agency Agenzia Spaziale Italiana.
Murra, lead author of the Io paper, said the spacecraft’s flyby revealed the most common type of volcanism on Jupiter’s hottest moon, “a huge lava lake with magma rising and falling.”
“The lava crust collapses against the lake walls, forming the typical lava rings seen in Hawaiian lava lakes. The walls can be hundreds of metres high, which is why magma overflows are not usually observed,” he added.
Researchers are still sifting through data collected during Juno’s Io flybys in February 2024 and December 2023.
