Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM Data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft using its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument point to a new heat source close to the south pole of Io that could indicate a previously undiscovered volcano on the small moon of Jupiter. This Worldview-3 satellite image was collected on July 10, 2018 and shows an 80-meter diameter circularIt also shows minor steam emissions.NASA Juno data indicate another possible volcano on Jupiter moon Io.Data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft using its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument point toof Io that could indicate a previously undiscovered volcano on the small moon of Jupiter. “The new Io hotspot JIRAM picked up is about 200 miles (300 kilometers) from the nearest previously mapped hotspot,” said Alessandro Mura, a co-investigator of the Juno mission who is affiliated with from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. “We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously discovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature.”

The discovery was showcased yesterday with a photo release from NASA, indicating the exact position of the newfound hotspot (and the prospective volcano that could be associated with it) on the surface of Io. The Juno team will continue to evaluate data collected on the December 16 flyby, as well as JIRAM data that will be collected during future (and even closer) flybys of Io, NASA said. Past NASA missions of exploration that have visited the Jovian system (Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons), along with ground-based observations, have located over 150 active volcanoes on Io so far. Scientists at NASA believe that there could be more than 250 volcanoes which are waiting to be discovered in the Jovian moon. Since it arrived in orbit around Jupiter in July of 2016, the Juno mission has been sending back vital information about the gas giant’s atmosphere, magnetic field and weather patterns. This will be the 13th science pass that the space probe performs in Jupiter’s system and is scheduled for July 16. During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
In data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft, an INAF team discovers suggestions of a new volcano close to the south pole of Jupiter's moon Io.