Jupiter’s moon Io as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Feb. 2, 2024.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSSIo, the innermost big moon of Jupiter, could not have a shallow sea of magma beneath its floor, as was beforehand thought.
The most volcanic place in the whole photo voltaic system, Io, is roofed by a whole lot of volcanoes, some producing eruptions so highly effective Earth-based telescopes can picture them.
Juno At Jupiter
A paper revealed right now in Nature takes information from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter — and flying near its moons — since 2016.
In December 2023 and February 2024, Io was imaged by Juno from as shut as simply 930 miles away. That’s nearer than any spacecraft has obtained to Io for 20 years since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft orbited Jupiter. The photos have been taken by JunoCAM, the spacecraft’s two-megapixel digital camera.
Global Magma Ocean?
It was hoped these new photos and experiments performed in the course of the flyby would make clear whether or not the magma is distributed in patches or globally.
That’s precisely what has occurred, with calculations of Io’s tidal heating by Jupiter exhibiting that volcanic exercise on Io is unlikely to be sourced from a magma ocean.
Tidal Heating
Io is taken into account the perfect place within the photo voltaic system to grasp tidal heating. It’s in a continuing gravitational tug-of-war with Jupiter and the enormous planet’s three different large moons. Its elliptical orbit additionally signifies that Jupiter’s gravitational pull varies.
Its fixed stretching and squishing because it orbits each 42 days causes deformation and frictional tidal heating so nice that magma is created underneath the floor.
Solid Mantle
However, the quantity of tidal power isn’t adequate to trigger the melting of Io’s inside, ruling out a subsurface magma ocean, acknowledged the authors. “Tidal heating alone seems inadequate to permit such a magma ocean to develop at Io,” reads the paper. According to the authors, this means that Io has a principally strong mantle — the layer between the crust and core.
The findings have implications for planetary scientists’ understanding of different moons, comparable to Europa at Jupiter, Enceladus at Saturn, and the 5 largest moons of Uranus. “Although it’s generally assumed among the many exoplanet group that intense tidal heating could result in magma oceans, the instance of Io reveals that this needn’t be the case.
Wishing you clear skies and extensive eyes.
