NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Flies Past Io and Jupiter, With Music by Vangelis

On May 16, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, and then the gas giant soon after. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is a world in constant torment. Not only is the biggest planet in the solar system forever pulling at it gravitationally, but so are its Galilean siblings – Europa and the biggest moon in the solar system, Ganymede. The result is that Io is continuously stretched and squeezed, actions linked to the creation of the lava seen erupting from its many volcanoes. This rendering provides a “starship captain” point of view of the flyby, using images from JunoCam. For both targets, Io and Jupiter, raw JunoCam images were reprojected into views similar to the perspective of a consumer camera. The Io flyby and the Jupiter approach movie were rendered separately and composed into a synchronous split-screen video. Launched on Aug. 5, 2011, Juno embarked on a 5-year journey to Jupiter. Its mission: to