Can we land on Jupiter?

The best way to explore a new world is to land on it. That's why humans have sent spacecraft to the Moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn's moon, Titan, and more. But there are a few places in the solar system we will never understand as well as we'd like. One of them is Jupiter. read more

Jupiter, like Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, is a gas giant. It’s thought that Jupiter’s atmosphere extends downward into a super dense gaseous region where the gas behaves like a liquid, at extremely high pressures. read more

Gravity assists through planetary flybys (such as by Earth or Venus) can be used to reduce the energetic requirement (i.e. the fuel) at launch, at the cost of a significantly longer flight duration to reach a target such as Jupiter when compared to the direct trajectory. read more

We breathe it and fly planes right through it with no trouble. So it makes sense to think that a gas planet must be like a big, airy cloud floating out in space. But take another look at Jupiter and Saturn—or pictures of them. read more