"Studying Io's lavas are like looking into a mirror of the ancient Earth that is, seeing the way volcanoes on Earth formed billions of years ago," Williams wrote. Io’s lavas are instead very rich in magnesium, very hot, very fluid and are much more likely to form shallow lava flow fields. The reason for Io's missing mountains is that the moon is deficient in silica-rich volcanic materials that produce steep cinder cones, Williams says. Instead, Io boasts large lava flow fields and lava lakes confined in volcanic craters. Mountains on Io are much taller than Earths largest mountains, towering up to 52,000 feet (16 kilometers) high. Impacts of large meteorites, for example, are soon wiped clean by lava flows and other volcanic processes.Īlso lacking on Io are Earth-like volcanic mountains, such as Mt. The incessant reworking of the moon's face means that it lacks a feature common on most other bodies in the solar system: craters. Because the moon's surface changes constantly from new eruptions, however, researchers will need to rely on telescopes from Earth to note any bright outbursts associated with volcanic eruptions. The new map combined images from NASA's two Voyager flybys of the 1970s as well as images from the Galileo orbiter, which circled Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Io, slightly larger than Earths Moon, orbits 422,000 kilometers from Jupiter. Instead, Io boasts large lava flow fields and lava lakes confined in volcanic craters. This generates roughly 25 times the volcanic activity found on Earth. Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. Gravitational forces from Jupiter and its sister moons, Europa and Ganymede, stretch and flex Io's thin crust. Io owes its geologic activity to interactions with its neighbors.
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