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Io is the size of the Earth’s moon but its surface is unlike anything ever seen before. This cratered surface was the stage for the most unexpected discovery of the Voyager mission. Horizon: Encounter With Jupiter, BBC 1980
Io raises a tide in Jupiter’s huge atmosphere in exactly the same way our moon rises a tide in the Earth’s ocean. ibid.
Io is just a thin crust of sulphur and rock sitting on a ball of molten lava. His volcanoes are powered by sulphur dioxide boiling under the surface at minus three hundred degrees Centigrade. ibid.
The innermost of the large moons orbits close to Jupiter itself. It’s called Io. The mottled red and yellow surface is scarred with craters ... The craters on Io were not made by meteorite impacts but by something else altogether ... Io’s volcanism is thought to be powered by a collusion between the giant tides in Jupiter’s atmosphere and a curious periodicity that Io’s orbit has with the orbits of the other Galilean satellites. Horizon: Earth to Miranda, BBC 1990
Jupiter’s moon Io: Io is a hellish world brimming with rivers of molten rock and lakes of hot liquid sulphur. It has enormous volcanoes and they’re the hottest spots in the solar system. Extreme Universe: Time Bombs, National Geographic 2010
Io is the same size as our moon. And should be a cold dead world. Yet our first glimpses of Io revealed it seething with heat, alive with volcanic activity ... Brian Cox, Wonders of the Solar System: Dead or Alive, BBC 2010
Something else must be driving that powerful volcanism on Io. ibid.
The gravity of Jupiter and its other inner moons squeeze, bend and twist this world until it heats up like a furnace. This is a world of erupting molten rock and poisoned gas plumes. 95 Worlds and Counting, 2000
About the size of Earth’s moon it orbits 263,000 miles from Jupiter’s surface. What sets Io apart from the other Jovian moons is its spectacular volcanism. The Universe s2e5: Alien Moons, History 2008
Jupiter’s gravity is so huge that it reaches out and crushes the moon. And it’s not only Jupiter’s gravity pulling on Io. Other nearby moons also pull on it as they pass by. So the core of the moon is being worked back and forth all the time. It’s called tidal friction. And generates extreme heat in Io’s core. How the Universe Works s1e8: Moons, Discovery 2010