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Jupiter Question
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? Larry |
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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 Remove spam and invalid from address to reply. |
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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 Remove spam and invalid from address to reply. |
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