Understanding Jupiter´s volcanic moon Io: Unique opportunities with HST, JWST and the NASA Juno mission

Jupiter moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System.

It is the main source of material for Jupiter´s vast magnetosphere, but the processes for the material transport from Io to the environment are not fully understood and the putative variability of Io´s mass loss is puzzling. Io also possibly harbors a global ocean of liquid magma, but the evidence for the ocean has been questioned.

The coming years provide a unique opportunity to investigate these two interesting aspects about the outstanding moon.

The NASA Juno mission with its suite of versatile instruments measures Io´s environment during several distant flybys and two close flybys.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took first observations of Io and another JWST Io observing program is selected for next year.

In addition, a large program for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is planned and there is archived HST data from many years on Io´s atmosphere and environment. Ground-based telescope obserations provide information on additional aspects or parts of the Io system.

In this 4-year PhD project, we address the questions of Io´s mass loss and the putative magma ocean through a combined analysis of JWST and HST observations and Juno data. The work is dividied in 5 distinct work pacakges, each using slected datasets to address a specific aspect.

The combination of various observations to be taken in the near future, recently taken data and unpublished archived data and makes the project both highly timely and topical but overall low risk.

We collaborate with observational expert Prof. de Kleer from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) on the data analysis inlcuding a planned research visit of the PhD student to Caltech.

In addition, we use numerical simulations for the interaction of the environments to connect the datasets, using magnetohydrodynamic model developed by collaborator Aljona Blöcker (LMU Munich, previously at KTH).

New insights into Io´s workings and influence will be crucial for the upcoming large ESA and NASA missions to Jupiter´s icy moons.

And the Io-Jupiter system is the prime example for various geophysical and plasma physical processes; a correct understanding of Io’s role is crucial, far beyond Jupiter and the Solar System.