Comparing NASA Discovery and New Frontiers Class Mission Concepts for the Io Volcano Observer (IVO)
Jupiter’s moon Io is a highly compelling target for future exploration that offers critical insight into tidal dissipation processes and the geology of high heat flux worlds, including primitive planetary bodies, such as the early Earth, that are shaped by enhanced rates of volcanism.
Io is also important for understanding the development of volcanogenic atmospheres and mass-exchange within the Jupiter System. However, fundamental questions remain about the state of Io’s interior, surface, and atmosphere, as well as its role in the evolution of the Galilean satellites. The Io Volcano Observer (IVO) would address these questions by achieving the following three key goals: (A) Determine how and where tidal heat is generated inside Io; (B) Understand how tidal heat is transported to the surface of Io; and (C) Understand how Io is evolving.
IVO was selected for Phase A study through the NASA Discovery program in 2020 and, in anticipation of a New Frontiers 5 opportunity, an enhanced IVO-NF mission concept was advanced that would increase the Baseline mission from 10 flybys to 20, with an improved radiation design; employ a Ka-band communications to double IVO’s total data downlink; add a wide angle camera for color and stereo mapping; add a dust mass spectrometer; and lower the altitude of later flybys to enable new science.
Views of Io. (a) Pioneer 11 image of Io captured on 2 December 2 1974 from a distance of 756,000 km (Credit: NASA/JPL). (b) Loki and Loki Patera shown in a Voyager 1 image mosaic (Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS). (c) Magnified view of part of a Galileo Color image of Io (11.8 km/pixel) captured 2 July 1999. This image shows Pele, a small lava lake that has produced a large, red ring that reaches as far as 600 km from the central vent, with overprinting by a recent dark tephra deposit from Pillan Patera (Credit: NASA/JPL/NOAO/Jason Perry). (d) Galileo view of Prometheus, which includes a large lava flow-field and secondary plumes associated with lava–sulfur frost interactions along the flow’s margin (Credit: NASA/JPL). (e) Galileo view of Hiʻiaka Montes, the dark area near the center of this “pull apart” mountain is a wide volcanic crater called a patera. (Credit NASA/JPL). (f) Galileo acquired its highest resolution images of Jupiter’s moon Io on 3 July 1999 during its closest pass to Io since orbit insertion in late 1995. This color mosaic uses the near-infrared, green and violet filters to approximate“true color” (i.e., what the human eye would see). Most of Io’s surface has pastel colors, punctuated by black, brown, green, orange, and red units near the active volcanic centers. (g) New Horizons image of Io, showing a large volcanic plume erupting from Tvashtar (Image: PIA09248; Credit: NASA/APL). (h) Loki and Loki Patera shown in a Juno image captured during its 57 th flyby of Jupiter, in December 2023 (Image: PJ57, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill). Note in panels (f) and (g), North is toward the top of the page, whereas the Juno image shown in (h) views looks toward the North Pole and the Northern Hemisphere.
This study compares and contrasts the mission architecture, instrument suite, and science objectives for Discovery (IVO) and New Frontiers (IVO-NF) missions to Io, and advocates for continued prioritization of Io as an exploration target for New Frontiers.
Christopher W. Hamilton, Alfred S. McEwen, Laszlo Keszthelyi, Lynn M. Carter, Ashley G. Davies, Katherine de Kleer, Kandis Lea Jessup, Xianzhe Jia, James T. Keane, Kathleen Mandt, Francis Nimmo, Chris Paranicas, Ryan S. Park, Jason E. Perry, Anne Pommier, Jani Radebaugh, Sarah S. Sutton, Audrey Vorburger, Peter Wurz, Cauê Borlina, Amanda F. Haapala, Daniella N. DellaGiustina, Brett W. Denevi, Sarah M. Hörst, Sascha Kempf, Krishan K. Khurana, Justin J. Likar, Adam Masters, Olivier Mousis, Anjani T. Polit, Aditya Bhushan, Michael Bland, Isamu Matsuyama, John Spencer
Sources of enhanced thermal emission on Io. Io is an extremely active volcanic world with over 343 active thermal sources, nearly all of which are more energetic than the most active eruptions on Earth today. For example, Kīlauea Volcano, on the island of Hawaiʻi, has a mean energy output <1 GW, which is less than nearly all volcanic systems on Io. (a) Global Voyager–Galileo global mosaic for Io, with the locations of key volcanic 70 systems discussed in the text. (b) Thermal emission (i.e., heat flux) for volcanic systems on Io (Davies et al. 2024b).
Comments: Submitted to The Planetary Science Journal for peer-review on 14 August 2024
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2408.08334 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2408.08334v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2408.08334
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Submission history
From: Christopher Hamilton
[v1] Thu, 15 Aug 2024 01:00:58 UTC (22,839 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08334
Astrobiology
