IS IO BIGGER THAN EARTH ?
This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft’s Jupiter flyby . The image was released in Oct. 2007. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) Jupiter's fifth moon, Io, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Plumes of sulfur spew upward as high as 190 miles (300 kilometers). The surface of Io is splotched with lava lakes and floodplains of liquid rock. Astronomers have mapped about 150 volcanoes on the moon, some of which blast lava 250 miles (400 km) out into space. There are volcanoes all over Io's surface, and as scientists perform observations they still occasionally see new hotspots pop up. For example, NASA's Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter, found a possible new hotspot on Io on Dec. 16, 2017. Io by the numbers Age: Io is about 4.5 billion years old, about the same age as Jupiter. Distan...