Can you land on jovian planets

NASA has plunged three spacecraft into gas giants. Two of them, Galileo and Cassini, were at the ends of their missions when they met their doom in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively.

But the Galileo spacecraft arrived with a passenger — a probe designed to drop into a gas giant atmosphere. NASA lost contact with the Galileo probe after about an hour, when it had reached 93 miles kilometers into Jupiter's atmosphere.

Scientists aren't sure how deep the probe got before it was destroyed by Jupiter's high pressures and temperatures. But could we one day send a spacecraft deeper into a gas giant such as Jupiter or Saturn? Given that these enormous planets may not have a solid surface on which to crash, could a spacecraft fly through a gas giant? According to Leigh Fletcher, an associate professor of planetary science at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, the short answer is "no.

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Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more. Thank you for submitting your email! It looks like something went wrong. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service technologyreview. Clouds on Venus form from sulfuric acid. Earth's atmosphere is 77 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and 1 percent argon, with variable amounts of water vapor, and trace amounts of other gases.

White clouds of water vapor hide much of Earth's surface in views of Earth from space. Mars has a very thin atmosphere containing mostly carbon dioxide, with nitrogen, argon, and trace amounts of oxygen and water vapor. The atmosphere also contains thin water and carbon dioxide clouds, and is frequently affected by dust storms. Jovian planets include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. These planets have larger sizes and masses.

You can see from the graph to the right that these condense at lower altitudes in Saturn's atmosphere than they do in Jupiter's atmosphere. The cores of all four jovian planets are made of some combination of rock, metal and hydrogen compounds. Jupiter and Saturn have similar interiors, with layers extending outward of metallic hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, gaseous hydrogen, and topped with a layer of visible clouds.

Unlike Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have cores of rock and metal, but also water, methane and ammonia. The layer surrounding the core is made of gaseous hydrogen, covered with a layer of visible clouds similar to Jupiter's and Saturn's. Just like the terrestrial planets, the deeper you go, the hotter and denser it gets.

An increase in temperature and density means an increase in pressure. The Jovian Planets click to enlarge. Back to top. How Rotation Affects Planet Shapes click to enlarge. Jupiter with its moons Europa closest in and Callisto aligned with the planet's center.