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Facts about Jupiter

facts an information **Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. This dynamic** ** colorful world is a very different kind of planet than the Earth. Our **** planet is a solid world that you can stand on. Jupiter, on the other hand, is a mostly gaseous world composed primarily of hydrogen **** and helium with smaller quantities of other materials. ** ** Pioneer 10 showed that the path to Jupiter was not as dangerous as the environment of Jupiter itself. Getting through the asteroid belt **** was easy; surviving the powerful radiation in the Jupiter system (that would fry a human in minutes, and is damaging to spacecraft) is harder. ** ** Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft visited Jupiter in 1973 and 1974 and gave us the first close-up pictures of Jupiter and its moons. They also provided **** a wealth of other data, including magnetic and ion particle data that helped us understand the magnetic field and magnetospheric ions and electrons encircling Jupiter. page showing a table with information about all of the successful NASA missions to the planets). ** Galileo was the first Jupiter orbiter which, starting in 1995, made close flybys of Jupiter's moons and found, for example, that most of the moons have their own magnetic fields (something never before found on any other moon in the solar system). The Cassini spacecraft did a flyby of Jupiter in 2000 while it was on its way to Saturn. Since Galileo was still operating, the 2 spacecraft were able to do observations in tandem while both were in the neighborhood of Jupiter. Cassini was able to make movies of Jupiter since it had a much higher data rate than the Galileo spacecraft; these wonderful movies showed the swirling colorful atmosphere as it circulated around Jupiter and thus contributed to the scientific harvest. The New Horizons spacecraft, on its way to Pluto, did a flyby of Jupiter in February 2007 in order to get a gravity boost. It is currently sending back spectacular images of Jupiter and its moons. Volcanoes going off on Io, bright surfaces on Europa, craters on Callisto, colorful patches on Ganymede, all have been imaged in the last few months.  These spacecraft studied many aspects of the planet and its moons. The moons are also referred to as satellites. The explorations uncovered information about the atmosphere, satellites and magnetosphere of Jupiter and the data return was a rich harvest of spectra, photos and other measurements that scientists are still studying to understand this complex system.
 * This beautiful planet contains swirling clouds of gases in a banded structure. The bands next to each other rotate in opposite directions **** which creates shear zones and fantastic meteorology. Jupiter also sports a Great Red Spot, noted in its atmosphere for 300 years or **** more. It is a gigantic storm swirling and roiling endlessly and causing chemical reactions to create the intense colors. **
 * Jupiter has been visited by 8 spacecraft. These were Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini and New Horizons. The very first **** mission to explore Jupiter was Pioneer 10, an American spacecraft launched in 1972. This was a true pioneering mission in that, before **** it left Earth, no one knew whether spacecraft could travel through the asteroid belt between here and Jupiter and survive the trip. **

Fast Facts: Jupiter
 * Age || About the same age as the Sun: 4.5 billion years ||
 * Location || Solar system ||
 * Avg. distance from the Sun || 778,300,000 km (483,600,000 miles) ||
 * Diameter || 143,000 km (88,850 miles) ||
 * Mass || 1.900 x 1027 kg ||
 * Orbital period around the Sun || 11.86 Earth years (4330 Earth days) ||
 * Number of moons || Jupiter has more than 60 moons. Four are called Galilean moons, 12 are smaller, named moons, and the rest are small, recently-discovered moons. ||
 * Distinguishing features || Jupiter has an interesting feature called the Great Red Spot, a huge storm of swirling gas that has lasted for hundreds of years. Three Earths would fit within the boundaries of the Great Red Spot, which appears brownish-red. Ganymede, a Galilean moon, is the largest moon in our solar system (larger than even the planet Mercury), and is the first moon known to have its own magnetic field. ||



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