NASA’s Juno spacecraft has imaged Jupiter’s moon Io from a record-breaking distance, revealing that its surface is unlikely to be topped with a shallow sea of magma as previously thought.
Io, the innermost giant moon of Jupiter, is home to hundreds of volcanoes and is considered the most volcanic place in the solar system. The Juno spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016 and imaged Io from just 930 miles away in December 2023 and February 2024.
The new images, taken by JunoCAM, the spacecraft’s two-megapixel camera, aimed to shed light on whether Io’s surface is a globally distributed magma ocean. However, calculations of Io’s tidal heating by Jupiter suggest that volcanic activity is unlikely to be sourced from a single, shallow sea of magma.
Io’s constant gravitational tug-of-war with Jupiter causes deformation and frictional tidal heating, resulting in the creation of magma under its surface. But the amount of tidal energy is not sufficient to cause the melting of Io’s interior, ruling out the existence of a subsurface magma ocean.
The findings have significant implications for planetary scientists studying other moons, such as Europa at Jupiter and Enceladus at Saturn. They suggest that intense tidal heating does not always lead to the formation of magma oceans, challenging a common assumption in the exoplanet community.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2024/12/15/jupiters-moon-io-doesnt-have-an-ocean-of-lava-scientists-say