In message , Larry G
writes
Here's a question I've always wondered about. How come no space probe (that
I'm aware of) has taken photos inside Jupiter's (or any of the large
planets') atmosphere? Or at least photos from a very low orbit.

I think this would be fascinating. Is it because the atmospheric
temperature would melt the probe/camera before it reached the low orbit
and/or descent? Are there any known plans to send a probe that could
withstand the extreme temps (or gravity?) to achieve such a feat?

That's easy. Only one spacecraft has gone there with a Jupiter entry
probe (Galileo) and it didn't have enough bandwidth to send back useful
pictures, even before the problem with the High Gain Antenna damaged the
mission. IIRC, the total data from the probe would fit on a floppy disk.
Galileo didn't make many close approaches because the radiation would
have destroyed it. We will have to wait for the nuclear ramjets,
balloons, and other speculative ideas to become real.
Meanwhile Cassini's Titan probe Huygens _does_ have the bandwidth for
pictures, but it has no Saturn probe.
--
Rabbit arithmetic - 1 plus 1 equals 10
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