{"id":13118,"date":"2025-09-19T09:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T13:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=13118"},"modified":"2026-06-29T09:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:42:17","slug":"nasa-historic-solar-system-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/nasa-historic-solar-system-find\/13118\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s Juno probe reveals Io’s 200-kilometer lava lake has cooler crust at center and hotter edges"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA has its focus on returning to the moon, but that does not exclude the possibilities of studying other celestial bodies. Our solar system holds many mysteries and unknown structures that humans could study and trace back to other cosmic events that might have contributed to the formation of our planet<\/strong>. However, the most accepted theory is that it was a result of impacts from asteroids, but the space agency discovered something that we have never seen before. They believed it was water, but it is actually another liquid.<\/p>\n

NASA has multiple probes in space: one has left our solar system<\/span><\/h2>\n

NASA launched a couple of probes into space to search for specific things. The Voyager 1, for example, was sent to study Jupiter and Saturn, and has since traveled beyond our solar system into interstellar space. Meanwhile, Voyager 2 also studied those planets, but also includes Uranus, Neptune, along with a one-way ticket to the interstellar space – anything outside the system is considered interstellar area.<\/p>\n

Once it passes the boundary of the solar system, its main task became to study the heliosphere boundary and other cosmic effects that are occurring. Although the Voyager 2 completed studying Jupiter<\/strong>, NASA has a plan: the Juno mission. This project was created exactly to study the biggest planet in our solar system, and it has 95 officially cataloged moons – one of those displays something astounding to NASA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Juno<\/span> spacecraft revealed new insights from Io<\/h2>\n

During its flybys of Jupiter’s moon Io, the spacecraft spotted something amazing – a huge lava lake called Loki Patera, around 200 kilometers (125 miles) wide. Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, stated that the lake’s surface looks smooth and reflective, which shows the lava cooled rapidly, forming obsidian rock. JunoCam and JIRAM – the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper – took the images and measurements that revealed these volcanic details.<\/p>\n

JIRAM’s infrared sensors found hot spots inside several volcanic depressions. This indicates that the lava lakes have cooler crusts in the middle and hotter edges, meaning magma continues to churn, resurface, and reshape the landscape, a process unlike anything on Earth – even though eruptions in other volcanos in our planet are recurrent.<\/a><\/p>\n

Tidal heating in Jupiter: Io has hundreds of erupting volcanoes<\/a><\/h2>\n

NASA’s Juno co-investigator in Rome, Alessandro Mura, noted that about 3% of Io’s surface is covered by molten lava lakes, and that the lava forms a glassy surface as it cools<\/strong>. Io, the most volcanically active place in the solar system, has hundreds of erupting volcanoes, and discoveries like Loki Patera are a significant victory for planetary science.<\/p>\n

This proves that extreme volcanic activity is not unique to Earth, and tidal heating from Jupiter’s gravity powers it – very different from our planet’s plate tectonics. Volcanic activity and lava flows are even more extreme on other worlds, says Einat Lev, a volcanologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the research. “A lot of planetary flows are much bigger than Earth’s,” she adds.<\/p>\n

The implications for the future: There<\/span> might be more lakes<\/h3>\n

Previous studies had spotted lava lakes on Io, but only in limited detail, NASA noted. Their new analysis shows that most of these lava lakes are hottest around the edges, meaning they are mostly covered by a cooler crust of solidified lava. These results give a clearer picture of how magma flows under Io<\/strong> and feeds the lava lakes. Mura points out that none of the lakes had a hot spot in the middle – so the lava isn’t<\/span> just rising<\/span> up straight through the center. While liquid water still a mystery in the universe, lava isn’t – and some eruptions are spotted in real time.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA has its focus on returning to the moon, but that does not exclude the possibilities of studying other celestial bodies. Our solar system holds many mysteries and unknown structures that humans could study and trace back to other cosmic events that might have contributed to the formation of our planet. However, the most accepted … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":13119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"NASA","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"NASA unveiled a new discovery inside our solar system. We had only seen these big lakes filled with water on Earth - but this time is something else.","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}