JAKARTA – The Juno spacecraft belonging to the United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will fly close to Jupiter’s third largest moon, namely “Io”, on Saturday, December 30.
According to NASA’s explanation, Juno will be the first spacecraft to come very close to Io in the last 20 years. This aircraft will be at a distance of 1,500 kilometers from Io’s volcanic surface.
From this very close distance, NASA hopes that the instruments that Juno carries can produce a number of important data. Later, the data collected by the Juno instrument will be combined with previous Juno team observations.
“We (will) find out how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flows changes, and how Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere,” said Juno Principal Researcher Scott Bolton.
Juno will approach Io twice. The first is at the end of December and the second is on February 3 next year. The Juno team will place the craft at the same distance and Juno’s three active cameras will record activity during the flyby.
“With our two close flybys in December and February, Juno will investigate the source of massive volcanic activity on Io, whether there is a magma ocean beneath the crust, and the importance of Jupiter’s tidal forces,” explained Bolton.
One of Juno’s instruments is the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM). During the flight, JIRAM will collect signatures of heat emitted by volcanoes and their vast craters on the surface of the moon Io.
JIRAM will work with the JunoCam or JCM, which is a wide-angle camera mounted on the Juno body. JunoCam will take bright colored images so that the resulting images can help the Juno team’s research.
The Juno probe has circled the solar system and monitored the moons of Jupiter at very close range. So far, Juno has approached Jupiter’s natural satellites, namely Ganimede and Europa. These two moons are usually referred to as ice moons because they are believed to have ice.
Juno has also been monitoring Io for a long time, but never as closely as the newest target. Typically, this aircraft monitors Io’s volcanic activity within a distance of 11,000 kilometers to 100,000 kilometers. From this distance, Juno has taken images of the north and south poles of the moon Io.
Tag: nasa moons of jupiter jupiter space technology
2023-12-28 07:35:00
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