NASA’s Juno Probe Captures Lava Lakes Covering Whole Surface of Jupiter’s Moon Io

NASA has released an all-new animation of a giant lava lake during two close flybys of Juno spacecraft on the surface of Jupiter's moon Io.

Glass-Smooth Lava Lake

One of Jupiter's mysterious moons is Io, which is home to hundreds of volcanoes that actively spew out fountains of lava dozens of miles high. In fact, Io is the most volcanically active world in the entire Solar System.

New research has suggested that the rocky moon has been spewing out lava since the dawn of the Solar system approximately 4.57 billion years ago. The details of the study are discussed in the paper entitled "Hot Rings on Io Observed."

It had already been discovered that Io's surface contains lava lakes at a few locations, like the 127-mile-long lake Loki Patera. Contrary to this, the recent study shows quite the opposite: this kind of lake is extremely common on Io, and the whole of its surface is actually dotted with them.

The discovery was made possible by Juno's instrument called the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper, or JIRAM. The Italian Space Agency designed it to detect the infrared light given off by the boiling-hot lava lakes.

High spatial resolution in the infrared images provided by JIRAM, coupled with Juno's propitious positioning during flybys, showed that the entire surface of the Galilean moon is covered in lava lakes within caldera-like formations. The team found out that this region is covered by around 3% of one of these molten lava lakes.

According to Juno co-investigator Alessandro Mura from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, the lava lake is mostly covered by its thick molten skin with a ring of exposed lava around its perimeters.

The data from the revelations was made in May and October 2023, when Juno made flybys of Io and approached the moon within 22,000 miles and 8,000 miles off its surface. Scientists have stated that infrared signals spotted by the JIRAM instrument are indicative of the presence of the hot rings surrounding the lava lakes.

Unlocking Mysteries of Jovian Moon

Io is the innermost and second smallest of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. This celestial body was discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610 and is the fourth-biggest moon in our Solar System.

For decades, hundreds of active volcanoes on the surface of Io have been seen belching huge clouds of sulfur and sulfur dioxide, according to reports. Scientists believe that this volcanic activity has been fed by tidal heating, in which the gravitational push and pull from Jupiter and the other moons keeps creating friction-heat deep inside Io. However, with the discovery of the lava lakes came a different view of the volcanic surface of the rocky moon.

The scientists say the hot rings enveloping the lava lakes denote the internal dynamics of Io. Moreover, the lava does not emanate past the rim of the lake, and this is an indication of periodic reiterations of the molten rock to be rejuvenated from the lake back below the surface of the ground.

Using the results of the research, the team got a view of perhaps the most common kind of volcanism in Io, where magma within the huge lakes of lava keeps moving up and down. The lava rings could have also formed because of magma welling up into the lake and making a crust that sinks at its edges.