• Question: Do you think It is possible for humans to send droids to jupiter?

    Asked by LBurns to Camilla, Dan, Katie, Mike, Rhys on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      It should be fairly possible – we have sent satellites near Jupiter (some of them have used Jupiter’s gravity to increase their speed without using fuel): Cassini-Hugyens (went to Saturn), Rosetta (the one that went to a comet), Voyager (has now left the solar system). We have also sent robots to space, there are some on the Internal Space Station and we have rovers on Mars.
      The hard part would be combining them – especially as Jupiter is a gas giant, there is nothing solid to land on. Perhaps we could send something through Jupiter, that would measure it’s gases or something. If you wanted to land something near Jupiter, it has moons, lots of moons. There are currently some plans to send satellites into orbit around some of the 4 big moons, known as the Galilian moons after Galileo who discovered them; perhaps they might send something that will land on them too (also like Rosetta which took Philea and that laneded on the comet).

    • Photo: Camilla Weiss

      Camilla Weiss answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      As Katie said – we could definitely send satellites and robots to Jupiter to explore its moons or observe it from afar but anything we sent into Jupiter’s atmossphere wouldn’t last long. It would be crushed by the huge amounts of pressure within the atmosphere. If you’ve ever seen a picture of Jupiter you might have noticed a big red spot – this is actually a giant storm system that’s been raging for nearly 400 years! A hurricane big enough to contain at least two planets the size of Earth!! Not very hospitable.

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