Link to Voyage to the planets: 2- Jupiter documentary
Documentary Description
Do you fancy blasting off to the King of the Planets? For a truly out of
this world planetary experience, you should head beyond the Asteroid
Belt to the largest planet in the Solar System. Welcome to Jupiter, a
world so roomy that it could swallow every planet and moon in the Solar
System and still have room for more.
For 400 years, we have been
gazing at Jupiter and wondering. Wondering what sort of worlds the
astronomer Galileo had spied all those years ago? What would it be like
to pay the King of the Planets a personal visit, to step upon its many
moons, or dive beneath its swirling clouds? These questions were
partially answered when the Galileo spacecraft slipped into orbit in
1995 for a seven-year sojourn that would prove beyond doubt that the
entire Jovian system is worth a return visit.
Jupiter is one of
the most spectacular places in the Solar System. Approach by spacecraft
and you would see from a long distance the cloudy face of Jupiter.
Incredibly complex, constantly changing and multi-coloured, Jupiter is
like a ball of liquid marble. It comes complete with giant red beauty
spot: a titanic storm raging for well over 300 years, possibly an
eternity. Wide enough to fit two Earths side-by-side, the Great Red Spot
adds a little scale to Jupiter’s immensity.
To drop beneath
Jupiter’s clouds is to dive into a seemingly endless sky. At first it’s
like entering an enormous alien chemical factory with swirling clouds of
rotten egg gas and paint stripper, but penetrate this outer onion skin
of clouds and things get increasingly weirder. Hydrogen gas is gradually
squeezed by heat and pressure into a liquid, and then into a churning
maelstrom more like a metal than the flimsy gas we are more familiar
with. This ocean of metallic hydrogen is the dynamo that powers
Jupiter’s vast magnetosphere, generating the powerful radiation belts
that make the Jovian System the most hazardous corner of the Solar
System for either Man or Machine.
If you like solid ground
beneath your feet, there’s plenty of that as well. Encircled by some 63
moons and moonlets, Jupiter is like a miniature solar system all of its
own. The four biggest moons offer off-world travel opportunities to die
for – possibly quite literally. Closest in is Io, the most volcanic
place in the Solar System, with pools of molten lava on its boldly
coloured surface and towering plumes rising into Space. Stand on its
trembling surface and you’d witness one of the Solar System’s great
spectacles – and one of its most dangerous. If the lava doesn’t get you,
the radiation certainly will.
But it is frozen Europa where
everyone is trying to reach. Deep beneath its icy shell scientists
expect to dive into a vast, dark saltwater ocean, warmed by the heat of
the rocks below. Water, warmth and an energy source: travel down here
with a submarine and we might have the best chance of a close encounter
of the alien kind.
Choose Jupiter for your next Solar System
sojourn and a change of scenery is guaranteed. With so many different
worlds on offer, there’s something for everyone out here
