Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, the largest and most imposing planet in the Solar System, has been the most recent target of NASA interest. Using data from the Juno mission, an artistic concept of a lava lake has been created on this satellite. Through YouTube, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) revealed the recording that has captured everyone’s attention. The animation is a concept artist of Loki Patera, a lake of magma and lava located on Io. To achieve this animation, data from the JunoCam imager, which is part of the Juno spacecraft, was used.
Juno performed extremely close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, explains the JPL portal. It approached just 1,500 kilometers from the surface to obtain close-up images of Jupiter’s satellite.
“Io is just full of volcanoes and we’ve caught some of them in action,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the Juno mission. “We also got excellent close-ups and other data on a 200-kilometer-long lava lake called Loki Patera. There are amazing details showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. “The specular reflection that our instruments recorded from the lake suggests that parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of obsidian glass created volcanically on Earth,” added the space physicist.
