What sort of lander may contact down on Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io? That is what a recent paper offered on the AIAA 2025 Regional Pupil Convention hopes to handle as a group of pupil engineers from Spartan House Methods at San Jose State College investigated a novel idea for touchdown a spacecraft in Io, which is probably the most volcanically energetic planetary physique within the photo voltaic system. This examine has the potential to assist scientists and engineers develop new mission ideas from all ranges of academia and trade.
For the examine, the researchers launched UNAGI, which is a singular mission idea that’s designed to make use of Jupiter’s magnetic area as “propellant” to decrease it to Io’s floor with out the necessity for precise propellant for its descent. The group notes how UNAGI will get its inspiration and technological ideas from a myriad of energetic house missions, together with NASA’s Juno, Europa Clipper, and the European House Company’s JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) spacecraft. Of the three, Juno is the one one actively learning Jupiter, whereas Europa Clipper and JUICE are at present en path to the photo voltaic system’s largest planet and its moons.
The group refers to this touchdown technique because the electrodynamic tether (EDT) propulsion system that makes use of Jupiter’s highly effective magnetic area to work together with the lander’s 50-kilometer (31-mile) tether, thus enabling corrections throughout the lander’s descent and can deploy airbags upon landing. As soon as this happens, the scientific payloads will start their mission of analyzing Io’s inner composition, floor modifications from volcanic exercise, outgassing and plume exercise, tectonic exercise, Io’s interactions with Jupiter’s magnetic area, and evaluating Io’s processes with the opposite Galilean moons (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto).
“Inside the context of deep house and even close to earth missions, propellantless propulsion is critical and essential for a number of causes,” the examine notes. “Utilizing an EDT maximizes gasoline economic system by leveraging the setting our spacecraft operates in. This could unlock mass allocations to spice up payload or different subsystems. An EDT system may also reap advantages via longevity. If satellites or probes by no means have to refuel they’ll theoretically keep in orbit for for much longer, doubtlessly indefinitely. All of those helpful attributes finally contribute to probably the most helpful factor concerning the EDT system: value.”
As famous, Io is the most volcanically active planetary body within the photo voltaic system, exhibiting tons of of energetic volcanoes and lava fields. This volcanic exercise is attributable to Io’s interplay with Jupiter’s large gravity that stretches and compresses the much-smaller moon throughout the latter’s orbit, which is extra eccentric (oval-shaped) than Earth’s. Whereas Io solely takes 42.5 hours (1.77 days) to orbit Jupiter, Io’s distance to Jupiter modifications throughout this time, bringing Io nearer and farther from Jupiter all through its orbit. When Io is nearer, it’s compressed from Jupiter’s gravity, and when it’s farther away, this stress is launched. Over hundreds of thousands of years, this stretching and compressing results in friction inside Io, which results in warmth, thus the tons of of energetic volcanoes we see at present.
Whereas NASA’s Juno spacecraft has obtained a number of pictures of Io, the one spacecraft to have studied Io in depth is NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which research Jupiter and its Galilean moons from December 1995 to September 2003. Throughout this time, Galileo obtained countless images of Io’s surface, together with energetic plumes, calderas, and lava fields. Given the energetic volcanism on Io’s floor, touchdown a spacecraft would possibly show troublesome, however this examine demonstrates how new ideas may pave the way in which for touchdown the primary spacecraft on a volcanically energetic world, thus instructing us about its formation and evolution.
How will UNAGI assist researchers land on Io within the coming years and many years? Solely time will inform, and that is why we science!
As all the time, preserve doing science & preserve trying up!
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