NASA's Juno Spacecraft to Make Closest Flyby of Jupiter's Volcanic Moon Io in 20 Years
The mission aims to study the moon's volcanic activity, with the harsh radiation environment around Jupiter causing damage to the spacecraft's imaging instrument.
- NASA's Juno spacecraft is set to make a close flyby of Jupiter's moon, Io, coming within 1,000 miles of the moon, the closest any spacecraft has been in the last 20 years.
- Io is the most geologically active body in the solar system, hosting over 400 active volcanoes, which periodically erupt due to hot magma created by friction caused by the gravitational pull between Jupiter and its other large moons.
- The Juno mission aims to study how Io's volcanoes vary, looking at their frequency, brightness, heat, lava flow changes, and how Io's activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter's magnetosphere.
- The harsh radiation environment around Jupiter has begun to cause damage to one of Juno's instruments, the JunoCam imager, reducing its dynamic range and causing 'striping' noise in images.
- Juno will make another close pass of Io in early next year, on February 3, investigating the source of Io's massive volcanic activity, the existence of a magma ocean underneath its crust, and the importance of tidal forces from Jupiter.
Digital Trends 
Space.com 
