00:00Jupiter, the undisputed king of our solar system. For decades it has been like a magnet for our curiosity, a world
00:07of storms that seem straight out of science fiction and incredibly profound mysteries. Today we're going to delve into the
00:14robotic odyssey, in that amazing journey we have undertaken to unravel the secrets of this planet.
00:20But before we start talking about all the discoveries, we need to understand one thing: the challenge. To explore.
00:27Jupiter is no walk in the park, far from it. It's one of the most complex feats of engineering.
00:33that we have never attempted, because we are facing an environment that is, truly, hostile.
00:37And that's the million-dollar question, of course. Why is it so complicated? And mind you, it's not just a matter of
00:44from a distance. Jupiter protects itself with brutal physical barriers that make every mission a high-stakes gamble.
00:52risk.
00:53Let's start with something basic: energy. Just to get from Earth's orbit to Jupiter's, we need
00:59a change in speed, known as delta V, of 9.2 kilometers per second.
01:05To give you an idea, that's almost the same amount of energy needed to escape from the surface.
01:09From Earth and into orbit. It's, let's face it, a monumental energy cost.
01:13And if you finally manage to get there, this is what you'll find. Jupiter is surrounded by radiation belts of particles.
01:20which are incredibly powerful.
01:23They are so, so intense that the Galileo probe, which was armored to the teeth, had a close call.
01:28It was plagued with a lot of technical glitches that were directly due to this lethal environment.
01:33Okay, imagine you survive the radiation and you say, alright, I'm going down, into the atmosphere. Well, bad idea, very bad.
01:39Jupiter does not have a solid surface like Earth. As a probe descends, the atmospheric pressure
01:44It explodes to levels we can't even imagine, crushing and disintegrating anything we send at it. There's no escape.
01:50Despite all these dangers, back in the 1970s, humanity dared to send its first
01:56explorers.
01:57They were flyover missions, passing by, that gave us the first close-up images and that, well, completely changed our
02:03view of the outer solar system.
02:05The pace was truly amazing. In just six years, four spacecraft passed through there.
02:12The Pioneers were the ones who paved the way, the ones who dared first.
02:16And right after that came the Voyagers, with much more advanced instruments, ready for a true revolution.
02:22And the Pioneer missions lived up to their name, didn't they? They were, well, pioneers.
02:27They gave us the first close-up photos of the planet and its Galilean moons, something that left us speechless.
02:33But it wasn't just photos. They detected its magnetic field, which is enormous, a clue to what was happening in
02:39its interior.
02:39And they confirmed something key: that Jupiter is basically a liquid planet, without a solid surface to stand on.
02:45And then, then came the Voyagers.
02:48And with them, wow, with new generation cameras and sensors, what they discovered in 1979 was not a simple
02:55improvement.
02:56It was, literally, like throwing the textbooks in the trash and starting from scratch.
03:00First, the rings. Unlike Saturn's, which are spectacular, Jupiter's are very thin and dark.
03:08almost impossible to see from Earth.
03:10Voyager 1 caught them almost by surprise, proving that Saturn did not have the exclusive rights.
03:15Second discovery. And this was a total bombshell.
03:18Volcanoes on Io. It was a shock to everyone.
03:21For the first time in history, we were seeing volcanoes erupting on another body in the Solar System.
03:26Io wasn't a dead ball of ice. It was a geological hell.
03:29And to top it all off, the third one, Europe.
03:32The images that arrived showed a completely broken ice surface, with enormous cracks,
03:37very similar, you know, to the Earth's polar ice caps.
03:40The implication was, wow!, mind-blowing.
03:43Beneath all that ice there could be an ocean of liquid water.
03:46Sure, the flyovers were exciting, but to truly understand the entire Jupiter system, you had to stay there.
03:54And that was the mission of Galileo, the only spacecraft, to this day, that has managed to orbit the gas giant for
04:00years.
04:01And one of the most spectacular and even dramatic moments of the mission was when they released an atmospheric probe.
04:08This small capsule was launched headfirst into Jupiter's atmosphere,
04:12transmitting data nonstop for almost an hour before, inevitably, the pressure and heat vaporized it.
04:19It was a full-fledged scientific sacrifice to obtain data from within.
04:23And during the eight years he was there, what Galileo discovered was a true treasure.
04:28He confirmed that the volcanoes of Hillo are 100 times more powerful than those on Earth.
04:32It provided the strongest evidence we had of a salt ocean in Europe.
04:36He made an unprecedented discovery.
04:38Ganymede, which is a moon, has its own magnetic field.
04:41And he solved the mystery of the rings.
04:43They are formed by the dust released by their inner moons.
04:46But the exploration of Jupiter didn't just tell us about Jupiter and its moons.
04:50It also taught us something fundamental about our own place in the universe.
04:54Its gravity, which is immense, not only shapes its system, but in a way also protects us.
05:01In 1994 something happened that was a true cosmic spectacle.
05:06Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which had been torn to pieces by Jupiter's gravity, crashed into the
05:12planet.
05:12It was the first time we were able to observe such a collision live.
05:16And to give you an idea of the scale we're talking about, take a good look.
05:20Those dark patches, left by fragments of the comet in Jupiter's atmosphere, were larger than the planet.
05:27The whole Earth.
05:28The energy that was released there was, quite simply, brutal.
05:32And this event confirmed Jupiter's role as a kind of cosmic vacuum cleaner.
05:37Its gravity well is so enormous that it attracts and swallows comets and asteroids, cleaning up the neighborhood a bit.
05:43and reducing the number of projectiles that could threaten Earth.
05:47And that's how science is, isn't it? Each mission answers some questions, but always opens the door to many more.
05:53The exploration of Jupiter is far from over, and right now science is trying to solve its greatest mysteries.
06:00deeper.
06:01And the next chapter of this story is being written right now by the Juno probe, which arrived there in 2016.
06:06Unlike Galileo, Juno orbits Jupiter by passing over the poles, allowing it to study the planet.
06:12in a completely new way, focusing on its interior and its origin.
06:17Juno is there to try to solve the great mysteries that remain.
06:20Questions like, is there a solid core at the center of Jupiter or not?
06:25How much water, a key ingredient for forming planets, is hidden beneath those clouds?
06:29What on earth is moving those 600-meter-per-second winds?
06:32And how does the dynamo that generates that incredible magnetic field work?
06:36And all this brings us back to the moons, of course, because with every piece of data we receive from Europe,
06:42which points to the existence of that ocean beneath the ice,
06:45The exploration of Jupiter goes beyond geology.
06:48It forces us to ask ourselves one of the most profound questions there is, one that drives the next generation of
06:54missions.
06:55Could there be life there?
06:56The search for answers has only just begun.
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