NASA’s Juno mission captured a surreal image of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io using its Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument when the spacecraft was about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away. The brighter the color in this image, the higher the temperature recorded by JIRAM.
The spacecraft has already made several close flybys of Jupiter’s moons Gaymede and Europa, with the latest being Io yesterday. Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) added a third dimension to the mission’s Jovian moon exploration during these flybys, as it provided a never before seen look beneath the water-ice crust of Ganymede and Europa to obtain data on its structure, purity, as well as temperature down to as deep as about 15 miles below the surface.
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The team is really excited to have Juno’s extended mission include the study of Jupiter’s moons. With each close flyby, we have been able to obtain a wealth of new information. Juno sensors are designed to study Jupiter, but we’ve been thrilled at how well they can perform double duty by observing Jupiter’s moons,” said Scott Bolton, Juno Principal Investigator of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
