Does NASA have plans on exploring the inner depths of Planet Jupiter? Im just interested on this huge planet!?
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hi, \n\nas i understand it, jupiter (and all the other gas giants, saturn uranus and neptune) don't really have a clear phase-separated surface, in the sense that earth/mars/moon do.\n\nthe interior structure of the planet is not well known, but it is believed that the atmosphere simply gets denser and denser as you go lower and lower, like fog that gets thicker and thicker until it's essentially liquid.  similarly as you go deeper yet, a smooth boundary between the liquid and solid is encountered.  however this has not really been directly confirmed.\n\nthe galileo mission to jupiter released a small probe, which descended into jupiter for 150 kilometers, until it was crushed by the high pressure of the atmosphere.\n\nhere are some resources that might help you out:\nhttp://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/jupiterpage.html\nhttp://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1989-084E\n\ncheers!
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Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Its diameter is 88,846 miles (142,984 kilometers), more than 11 times that of Earth, and about one-tenth that of the sun. It would take more than 1,000 Earths to fill up the volume of the giant planet. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter appears brighter than most stars. It is usually the second brightest planet -- after Venus.\n\nJupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. Its mean (average) distance from the sun is about 483,780,000 miles (778,570,000 kilometers), more than five times Earth's distance. Ancient astronomers named Jupiter after the king of the Roman gods.\n\nAstronomers have studied Jupiter with telescopes based on Earth and aboard artificial satellites in orbit around Earth. In addition, the United States has sent six space probes (crewless exploratory craft) to Jupiter.\n\nAstronomers witnessed a spectacular event in July 1994, when 21 fragments of a comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter's atmosphere. The impacts caused tremendous explosions, some scattering debris over areas larger than the diameter of Earth.\n\nPhysical features of Jupiter\n\nJupiter is a giant ball of gas and liquid with little, if any, solid surface. Instead, the planet's surface is composed of dense red, brown, yellow, and white clouds. The clouds are arranged in light-colored areas called zones and darker regions called belts that circle the planet parallel to the equator.\n\nOrbit and rotation\n\nJupiter travels around the sun in a slightly elliptical (oval-shaped) orbit. The planet completes one orbit in 4,333 Earth days, or almost 12 Earth years.\n\nAs Jupiter orbits the sun, the planet rotates on its axis, an imaginary line through its center. The axis is tilted about 3¡. Scientists measure tilt relative to a line at a right angle to the orbital plane, an imaginary surface touching all points of the orbit.\n\nJupiter rotates faster than any other planet. It takes 9 hours 56 minutes to spin around once on its axis, compared with 24 hours for Earth. Scientists cannot measure the rotation of the interior of the giant planet directly, so they have calculated the speed from indirect measurements. They first calculated the speed using an average of the speeds of the visible clouds that move with interior currents, except for a more rapid zone near the equator.\n\nJupiter sends out radio waves strong enough to be picked up by radio telescopes on Earth. Scientists now measure these waves to calculate Jupiter's rotational speed. The strength of the waves varies under the influence of Jupiter's magnetic field in a pattern that repeats every 9 hours 56 minutes. Because the magnetic field originates in Jupiter's core, this variation shows how fast the plant's interior spins.\n\nJupiter's rapid rotation makes it bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles. The planet's diameter is about 7 percent larger at the equator than at the poles.\n\nMass and density\n\nJupiter is heavier than any other planet. Its mass (quantity of matter) is 318 times larger than that of Earth. Although Jupiter has a large mass, it has a relatively low density. Its density averages 1.33 grams per cubic centimeter, slightly more than the density of water. The density of Jupiter is about 1/4 that of Earth. Because of Jupiter's low density, astronomers believe that the planet consists primarily of hydrogen and helium, the lightest elements. Earth, on the other hand, is made up chiefly of metals and rock. Jupiter's mix of chemical elements resembles that of the sun, rather than that of Earth.\n\nJupiter may have a core made up of heavy elements. The core may be of about the same chemical composition as Earth, but 20 or 30 times more massive.\n\nThe force of gravity at the surface of Jupiter is up to 2.4 times stronger than on Earth. Thus, an object that weighs 100 pounds on Earth would weigh as much as 240 pounds on Jupiter.\n\nThe atmosphere of Jupiter is composed of abou
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http://home.case.edu/~sjr16/jupiter_moons.html These are the four Galilean satellites. They are named so because they were the only four moons that Galileo was able to see. They are also the largest of Jupiter's moons. From top-left in a clock-wise direction, they are Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io.\n\nIf Ganymede were not bound to Jupiter, it would be considered a planet in its own right. It is actually bigger than Mercury, being 390 km (234 miles) larger in diameter. It has heavily cratered dark regions, with lighter expanses in-between. Geologists think that it used to have plates, like the Earth, but they froze together soon after Ganymede's birth.\n\nCallisto, the outermost of the Galilean moons, is almost an exact twin of Mercury in size and appearance. Every square mile is covered with craters or other signs of bombardment. Other than that, there are no distinct characteristics\n\nEuropa, closer to Jupiter than Ganymede, is the smoothest natural body in the solar system. It resembles a billiard ball until seen very close-up. At that distance you can start to see dark, deep, and narrow cracks. In scale, though, the relief is no bigger than a line on a billiard ball made with a felt-tipped marker. Geologists think that Europa has liquid water underneath the icy surface - and possibly life.\n\nIo, closer yet, is commonly compared to a pizza. Its volcanoes make it the most active world in the solar system. They spew out the sulfuric acid that gives Io its many colors. They also make Io one of the only three moons with an atmosphere in the solar system. Saturn's Titan and Neptune's Triton are the other two moons. Io is similar in size and composition to our moon. Io is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between Jupiter and the other moons. Tension has melted the interior and raised the surface temperatures so high that scientists calculated that it generates the most heat for its size of any body in the solar system, except for the sun.\n\nOther Moons\n\nThere are 57 other moons that have been discovered around Jupiter. There are four closer than Io. Their names, in order from Jupiter are Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea, and Thebe. Still in order after the Galilean Satellites are recently discovered Themisto, Leda, Himalia, Lysithea, and Elara. Then there are four more recently discovered moons, Ananke, and three more moons, of which scientists know little about. After these seven come Ananke, Carme, Pasiphaë, and Sinope, with two more moons in-between Pasiphaë and Sinope. After Sinope, 12 more moons are found.\n\nThe outer 33 moons all orbit Jupiter in a direction opposite (except for J/2003 J20) to that which Jupiter spins, which leads scientists to believe they are captured asteroids.\n\nThe largest non-Galilean moon is Amalthea, being 262 km (163 miles) at its widest diameter.\n\nThe innermost two moons, Metis and Adrastea, patrol the outer edge of the rings, their small gravity being enough to keep the particles from flying out.\n\nNearly all of the moons that have been discovered in the last few years orbit retrograde to the direction of Jupiter's rotation , indicating that they are most likely not native to the system. They are also very small. Those that have not yet been given names will eventually be given names by the International Astronomical Union, the only official naming group.
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Don't have it handy,but it'sjust a little denser than water, from what I remember. Check www.nasa.gov. They have lots of planetary info!
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It is not yet known if Jupiter has a solid surface.  If it does, then the solid part of the planet can only make up a very small fraction of the volume of the planet.\n\nSaying that the Jupiter's atmosphere constitutes a "surface" (as some answerers have proposed) is not really correct in that one cannot point to a surface at which the atmosphere "ends".  Like Earth's atmosphere, Jupiter's atmosphere simply becomes more and more tenuous as one moves further from the planet (in an approximately exponentially decreasing fashion).  Picking a pressure at which the atmosphere "ends" is a arbitrary choice.
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As time goes on, we will be learning more and more about the planets that exist, and their size distribution. \n\nThe really large planets are probably gas giants, from what we can tell. The smaller planets are rocky planets, probably. We use two main methods of detecting extrasolar planets:\n\n1. Looking for wobbles caused by the extrasolar planet. \n\nIf the extrasolar planet is big enough and close enough to the star, then the star will be pulled sideways as it orbits the system barycenter, and we can detect that. This method is mainly useful for detecting gas giants, like Jupiter.  \n\n2. Looking for planetary transits\n\nBy looking for a pattern of repeating shadows caused by an extrasolar planet passing in front of a star, we can detect extrasolar planets. This transit method has not found as many planets yet as the wobble  method, but theoretically should be able to find much smaller planets, possibly even small rocky planets like earth.\n\nThere are several projects worldwide now (a couple of dozen or more) developing programs to find new extrasolar planets, so in the next few years there should be a large population of new planets found. So far, we know of about 150 extrasolar planets, most of which are gas giants. \n\nHowever, even if a lot of data are analyzed, from many many stars, using our best methods, our statistics will still be biased towards the largest planets, since those are the ones we can detect most easily. \n\nSome estimate that there might be planets around almost every star, and there could be several around every star, so there could be a LOT of planets in the universe. Very few will be in the habitable zone and of the right size for human habitation, but some probably will be.
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yes--look:\nhttp://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/home/F_Planet_Seasons.html
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Not really "similar".  The same gravitational forces that cause tides on Earth are at work on the four largest moons of Jupiter, but on much larger scales.  Earth is small - our gravity only raises the tides a few feet.  The Jovian moons are pulled and tugged bu the immense gravity of Jupiter, heating the cores to immense temperatures (kind of like bending a paperclip back in forth - before it breaks, it gets very hot).\n\nThe innermost satellite Io gets so hot its entire core is liquid magma.  Io is constantly erupting, many hundreds of times a day.  The next planet, Europa, is a frozen world on the outside.  But because it is also heated internally, there is speculation that there is a massive liquid ocean under the ice, several miles thick.  If true, that would mean there's more liquid water on Europa than there is on Earth.  Liquid water is essential to life as we know it - and there are plenty of organic compounds and material out in space.  Given water, heat, and organic compounds, there is the distinct possibility for life.  But we won't know until we actually go there and drill into the topmost ice.\n\nGanymede is further out, and experiences less tidal force.  Although there may be a liquid ocean under the ice there too, the ice is much thicker and it's estimated that the "ocean" may really be a mixture of icy sludge.  The outermost moon, Callisto, is probably just a solid ice ball.
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Nah, there's nothing out there. It would take too long to travel to any of the planets. By the time I got to Jupiter I would be wearing diapers and being fed Geritol through an IV everyday.
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52 Europa, diameter 289 km, was discovered on February 4, 1858 by H. Goldschmidt. It is named after Europa, one of Zeus's conquests in Greek mythology.\n\nEuropa may be the seventh largest known asteroid (it cannot currently be ranked relative to 3 Juno) and is very dark in color. It belongs to the Hygiea asteroid family.\n\nIt should not be confused with Jupiter's moon Europa.\n\nNasa is preparing plans for a possible mission to Europa ( the MOON) that would put a lander on the surface. It has even been suggested that a mission could be devised that would drill through the ice layer and release a probe into the liquid underment. This is the "hydrobot" concept.\n\nWater or ice? Liquid or slushy or frozen solid? Ever since the Voyager spacecraft missions flew through the Jupiter system in 1979, planetary scientists have wondered about the layer of ice surrounding the second moon of Jupiter.\n\nEuropa's ice surface makes it one of the brightest, and smoothest, objects in our solar system.\n\nRecent Galileo spacecraft images have provided evidence that Europa had a liquid ocean underneath the frozen crust sometime in its history, but it is not clear if this ocean still exists. Of the various explanations proposed by scientists, most scenarios of Europa's evolution have the water layer freezing solid earlier in its history. The moon's surface is -260° F, which could freeze an ocean over several million years. But scientists think that the warming caused by a tidal tug of war with Jupiter and neighboring moons could be keeping large parts of the ocean liquid.
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What sort of features are you hoping to see? An 80mm would be enough to see the red spot on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. It probably won't make out the Cassini division in the rings, though.  You should also be able to see cloud bands on Jupiter. When looking at Mars, you might be ble to see some dark splotches during excellent seeing conditions, but Mars is a hard object for everyone. The most you will ever see on Venus is the phase because the clouds obscure everything else. Mercury is a hard object and is way too small to see anything. Uranus will be a blue dot as will Neptune. You won't see Pluto.\n\nI hope this helps!
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no the fourth planet from the sun.put me on best answer please!\n\nHappy Trails ♥!
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http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/jupiterfact.html
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The link below has great overview info and statistics (including density) for all the planets, asteroids, comets, etc. \n\nCheck it out!
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Everything about space is interesting. It is all a mystery and so much is yet to be discovered. I used to love to study the planets when I was in school. I love to watch the stars and wonder what is up there and what it is really like to be billions and billions of miles away from the earth
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see for yourself.\n\nhttp://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html
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Your density will be similar to whatever material makes up the planet.  For instance, Mars is mostly rock, with some iron ore.  I'd guess the density is on the order of 2.5 g/cm3.  Jupiter is made up of mostly dense gases.  I'd guess given the temp, that the density is slightly higher than that of water, like 1.3 g/cm3.\n\nVolume on the other hand.......are you kidding?  You seriously want it in cm3????  You'll run out of room on your paper writing zeros.