See The Jaw-Dropping New Images Of Jupiter And Its Lava-Spewing Moon Just Back From NASA’s Juno 463 Million Miles Away

NASA’s Juno spacecraft—in orbit of Jupiter since 2016—has just sent back more spectacular images from its JunoCam camera.

They include images not only of Jupiter’s cloud-tops, but also of Io, one of its largest moons and the most volcanically active world in the Solar System.

All of these photos were originally taken by the spinning spacecraft’s on-board two-megapixel camera over the course of about three hours during its 41st perijove (close flyby) on Saturday, April 9, 2022 and then beamed back across millions of miles of space via NASA’s Deep Space Network.

The most interesting object in JunoCam’s images was Jupiter’s third-largest moon Io, which it got within 66,000 miles/106,000 kilometers of.

Io has not been photographed this close since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted a brief flyby in 2007 during its journey to Pluto. It captured a volcanic explosion.

Juno will image Io again from a distance during a flyby in December 2022, but is scheduled to get to within just 900 miles/1,500 km of Io in both December 2023 and February 2024.

Although they were beamed-back over the weekend it’s not until now that they’re seeing the light of day. That’s because NASA doesn’t use any of its own image processors, instead merely uploading Juno’s raw images to the NASA mission’s special website for citizen scientists around the world to process them into the beautiful photos you see here.

They were created using that raw data by citizen scientists Andrea Luck, Kevin M. Gill, Brian Swift and Björn Jónsson, Jason Perry and Alessandro G. Ceretti.

The past few years has seen them produce dozens of wonderful images of Jupiter.

Juno and Jupiter are currently 463 million miles/745 million kilometers, which is about five times the Earth-Sun distance. Despite that, Juno is solar powered—the farthest solar-powered object in the Universe.

However, there’s another moon of Jupiter that Juno is getting close to that planetary scientists are just as excited about.

Juno’s perijove in September will see Juno get a close-up of Europa, one of Jupiter’s most exciting Galilean moons that looks like a “veiny eyeball.” Juno did get some distant shots of Europa during its last perijove. It also got a very distant view of Europa and Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on its 39th perijove.

Europa is Jupiter’s fourth largest of its 79 moons and about 1,900 miles/3,100 kilometers in diameter. That’s slightly smaller than our own Moon.

On September 29, 2022 it will get to just 221 miles/355 kilometers) above Europa’s surface. The photos will help inform two missions being planned in Juno’s wake—NASA’s Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE).

Europa Clipper will launch in October 2024 and arrive in late 2027 to perform about 45 flybys, in each pass photographing the moon’s icy surface in high resolution.

JUICE will launch in May 2022, arrive in 2029 and take three and a half years to examine Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.

The largest moon in the Solar System and larger even than Mercury, Ganymede has its own magnetic field and auroras. It may also have a liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface. From a photo of Ganymede by Juno taken in June 2021 scientists were able to discern new craters on its surface.

Juno flies on an unusual elliptical orbit of Jupiter, which takes it far from the planet only to swing in close every 43 days. It spins to keep itself stable as it makes its long oval-shaped orbits.

The mission is expected to end in September 2025, though if the spacecraft remains healthy its mission may be extended.

Juno launched on August 5, 2011 from Cape Canaveral, Florida and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.