Space · Moons

Iocaste

A moon of Jupiter — An Ananke-group retrograde named for the mother of Oedipus.

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Quick facts

Parent planet

Jupiter

Diameter (mean)

5 km

Mass

1.9 × 10¹⁴ kg
2.6e-09 Moon masses

Mean orbital radius

21,269,000 km

Orbital period

631.5 Earth days

Discovery year

2000

Discoverer

Scott S. Sheppard et al.

Naming origin

Mother (and wife) of Oedipus

Surface conditions

Iocaste is a 5-km retrograde irregular in the Ananke group, named in 2003.

Missions and observations

Every Jupiter-system mission has had an opportunity to image or characterize Iocaste. The list below is the Jupiter-system mission catalog; specific Iocaste encounters are documented in mission archives.

Mission	Year at Jupiter	Status
Pioneer 10 NASA	1973	Completed
Pioneer 11 NASA	1974	Completed
Voyager 1 NASA	1979	Completed
Voyager 2 NASA	1979	Completed
Ulysses NASA/ESA	1992	Completed
Galileo NASA	1995	Completed
Cassini-Huygens NASA/ESA/ASI	2000	Completed
New Horizons NASA	2007	Completed
Juno NASA	2016	Active
Europa Clipper NASA	2030	On the way
JUICE ESA	2031	On the way

Naming etymology

Iocaste (Jocasta) was the Queen of Thebes, mother and wife of Oedipus in the Sophoclean tragedy. Adopted by the IAU in 2003.

Methodology & sources

Diameter, mass, and orbital parameters from JPL Solar System Dynamics — Physical Parameters. Discovery year and discoverer from the JPL Satellite Discovery Circumstances. Naming etymology from the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. Stylized SVG hero composed from NASA / JPL imagery as visual reference; no photographs are reproduced.