Io, Jupiter's moon

NASA presents us with a trip to the amazing landscape of the volcanic moon of Jupiter Io, the NASA Juno spacecraft flew over Io in December 2023 and then in February 2024 passing just 1500 km from the surface of this Moon, the most volcanic and active of the entire solar system.

The images and data obtained by the ship have been processed by Artificial Intelligence to offer us these views, the first of a lava lake 200 km in diameter, almost the distance between Malaga and Melilla and as extensive as Galicia. The lake is part of the Loky or Loky Patera supervolcano, there are amazing details such as islands in the middle of that lake of magma, bordered by hot lava. The ship also captured a specular reflection that suggests that there are parts on the surface of Io that are as smooth as glass, could be obsidian a volcanic created material on earth imagine walking across a plain of black glass.

Another amazing structure that NASA shows is this bell tower mountain, a man that suits it very well since its peaks are extremely sharp and high, it is estimated that it can be between 5 to 7 km high, which is somewhat larger than ours. Luna has mountains larger than Everest and more than 400 active volcanoes. All this energy and dynamism is due to the fact that it is of Jupiter's large satellites that is closest to the planet and therefore the one that suffers the most from the gravitational pulls that heat the heart of Io.