NASA shares spectacular images from Juno's latest flyby of Jupiter's Moon Io

NASA's Juno spacecraft has beamed spectacular images of Jupiter's Moon Io from its recent flyby. The probe flew past Io on December 30 within the distance of 2500 km, the closest any spacecraft has been to the Moon in over 20 years.

Several pictures of Io have now been uploaded on the Mission Juno website and it shows the volcanic Moon in several different phases as it orbits Jupiter. The agency said that more images will be available soon. 

Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system with hundreds of active volcanoes. NASA says that some of its volcanoes erupt lava fountains several kilometers high and some eruptions are so powerful that they can be spotted from Earth using large telescopes. As a result of its volcanic activity, Io also has lakes of molten silicate lava. 

Interestingly, Juno will make another flyby of Io on February 3 again from an altitude of about 2500 km and eventually drift as far away as 1,15,000 km. With these two flybys, NASA scientists plan to investigate the source  of the Moon's volcanic activity.

Juno has now completed 57 flybys of Jupiter and its Moons since it entered the gas giant's orbit in 2016.