Showing posts with label Jupiter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jupiter. Show all posts

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Jupiter - Pioneer, Voyager, Ulysses, Cassini-Huygens, New Horizons


We've learned about space exploration of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Next up is Jupiter!

We launched many spacecrafts to go fly by Jupiter and take close pictures.
Pioneer 10 in 1972, Pioneer 11 in 1973.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were both launched in 1977.
Ulysses was launched in 1990.
Cassini-Huygens was launced in 1997.
New Horizons was launched in 1006.

All of the spacecraft took about 2 years to get to Jupiter, and most of them continued flying on to look at other planets.

voyager 1
(from: wikipedia - voyager 1)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Interstellar Cloud

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Jupiter


We just learned about the planet of Mars.

The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter
jupiter
(from: wikipedia - jupiter)

Jupiter is called a gas giant because it is mostly made up of gases like air instead of solids or liquids.

It is so big, that it is over 11 times bigger around than earth is!

We only have one moon on the Earth, but Jupiter has 67 moons.
One of them called Ganymede is about half as big as Earth, and bigger than the planet Mercury!

Another interesting thing about Jupiter is something called the Great Red Spot.
It is a giant storm that can be seen on Jupiter's surface.
great red spot
(from: wikipedia - great red spot)

The spot is over 100 years old, and is so big you could fit more than two whole Earths inside it!