
Enlarge / This processed picture of Io was captured by Juno’s JunoCam instrument July 30. (credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Thomas Thomopoulos)
The final time a spacecraft received this near Jupiter’s moon Io was greater than 20 years in the past, a blink of an eye fixed on a typical geological timescale. Most planetary our bodies in our Photo voltaic System would not exhibit a lot change in a few a long time.
However Io is totally different, with volcanic eruptions repeatedly remaking elements of the moon’s crust. Which means there is a good likelihood one thing on Io has modified since NASA’s Galileo orbiter final encountered it in 2002.
NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft is delivering the contemporary information on Io with a collection of flybys, every getting nearer to Jupiter’s volcanic moon till a pair of close-up encounters at a spread of lower than 1,000 miles (about 1,500 kilometers) in December and February.
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