Why Io Is The Strangest Moon NASA Has Discovered

Why Io Is The Strangest Moon NASA Has Discovered.

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Out of Jupiter's 53 named moons and 26 unofficially named moons, Jupiter’s Io has got to be the strangest. As the fourth-largest moon in our Solar System, Io is the only object outside of Earth that is observed to have active volcanoes. In fact, Io has hundreds of active volcanoes making it the most volcanically active object in our entire solar system. According to NASA, the moon's volcanoes have reached temperatures upwards of 1,650 degrees Celsius.

However, the Io moon also fosters an average surface temperature of negative 130 degrees Celsius. Thanks to this massive difference in temperature, Io is covered in sulfur dioxide snowfields alongside volcanoes with 400-kilometer-high plumes.

As one of the hottest and most active moons in the entire Solar System, Io puts on quite the show. The moon put on such a show that it was discovered in 1610 by Galileo before its naming in the mid-1800s.
Even with its discovery, there wasn't any information on the moon until NASA's 1972 launch of Pioneer 10. It took the space probe a year to fly past Jupiter, where it discovered a belt of radiation surrounding Io, suggesting a potential atmosphere.

In more recent times, NASA’s New Horizons space probe captured Io enduring a volcanic explosion. And on top of this, the Gemini Observatory discovered that Io's atmosphere collapses during Jupiter eclipses. As it would turn out, Io's sulfur dioxide atmosphere collapses when Jupiter's shadowing of the moon freezes the atmosphere. This happens every 0.9 days, which is half of Io's 1.8-day planetary orbit.

Remember, Io's surface temperature averages at about negative 150 degrees Celsius. So when it passes into Jupiter's shadow, the moon ends up cooling to negative 168 degrees Celsius, which actually freezes Io's atmosphere, turning it to frost. Yes, the moon's atmosphere actually freezes and almost snows back to its surface before sublimating to a gaseous form.

That's incredible and incredibly helpful, as this discovery helped NASA better understand how Io manages to hold its own atmosphere. See, sulfur dioxide freezes at around negative 73 degrees Celsius. That's 77 degrees higher than Io's average surface temperature, meaning that the atmosphere should freeze over more often than not.

Io's own atmosphere freezes and returns to the planet as frost, simply because Jupiter passes between the moon and the Sun. Once a day. With an effect similar to the Moon's on Earth's oceans, will Io eventually have lava tides?

Speaking of which, you may be wondering, why is Io volcanically active while the other three Galilean moons aren't? Why does Io theoretically hold the least amount of water out of any object in our Solar System? How were the Galilean moons formed like planets?

There are still many more questions, and they're all towards a moon that has been studied for nearly 50 years. NASA has sent multiple missions directly to Io or redirected towards Io, and we now have more questions than at the time of those launches. In the 1970s.

So, with all that being said, what do you all think? Thanks to Io's forever-changing surface, will we ever be able to collect information on its history? Or will our attempts to discover the strange moon be covered by the same 1,650-degree lava which has also covered craters?

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