Io (Moon of Jupiter) Postcard

This design features an image of Io, which is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter. The moon was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after the mythological character Io, a priestess of the Greek goddess Hera. This image of Io is based on photography taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft as it passed close by the moon in 1999. Most of Io's surface has the colour of pastel tones, punctuated by black, brown, green, orange and red spots near active volcanic sites. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, DC.