Jupiter’s moon Io may have been volcanically active throughout its life. In this image of Io, taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in 2023, a bright volcanic plume can be seen on the left, just ...

Assuming Io initially held some 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 20 sextillion) tons of sulfur, the amount it’s lost so far leaves roughly 200 quintillion to 1.2 sextillion tons of sulfur ...

Because Io is so close to its massive host planet, the moon is subjected to a tremendous gravitational pull as it orbits Jupiter once about every 42 hours, according to the Planetary Society.

In a way, Io’s internal heat can be traced to the presence of Europa and its other nearest neighboring moon, Ganymede: the two bend Io’s orbit around Jupiter into a distinctly noncircular oval ...

In the vastness of our Solar System, each celestial body has a story to tell,but few are as dramatic and captivating as Io, Jupiter’s volcanic moon. Unlike the frozen deserts of Mars or the thick ...

Io, one of Jupiter’s Jovian moons, is the most volcanic place in our entire Solar System. Over the last few years NASA’s Juno ...

Jupiter's moon Io is one of Jupiter’s several moons. This image was taken on December 30, 2023 during the Juno spacecraft’s flyby of this volcanic Jupiterian moon. CREDIT: NASA/SwRI/MSSS ...

New research confirms Jupiter's moon Io has been a volcanic hellscape for almost the Solar System’s entire 4.57 billion-year history.

The dense moon is the fourth largest satellite within the solar system, and unlike most of Jupiter and Saturn’s moons, Io is covered in a hellish landscape of more than 400 active volcanoes.

"We think that the Moon went through a period when it looked like Io, and for the same reason," says Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist with the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Io is the fifth most distant moon from Jupiter, orbiting at an average distance of 262,000 miles (422,000 kilometers), and the third-largest Jovian moon, at slightly larger than Earth's moon ...

Much of this data was collected during Juno’s most recent flyby of Io on April 9, when it came within 3 and 4.3 miles (5 and 7 kilometers). Its trajectory will continue to take it on flybys of ...