Io, as seen from the Galileo probe.

The principal investigator behind a proposal to explore Jupiter’s moon Io is in such a hurry to get there that he is content to develop the robotic mission for about half the money the planetary science community said NASA should spend to explore the volcano-laden Jovian satellite.

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Dan Leone is the NASA reporter for SpaceNews, where he also covers other civilian-run U.S. government space programs and a growing number of entrepreneurial space companies. He joined SpaceNews in 2011.Dan earned a bachelor's degree in public communications...