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Jupiter has been called the Solar System's vacuum cleaner [222] because of its immense gravity well and location near the inner Solar System. There are more impacts on Jupiter, such as comets, than on any other planet in the Solar System. [223] For example, Jupiter experiences about 200 times more asteroid and comet impacts than Earth. [66]
The orbits of Solar System planets are nearly circular. Compared to many other systems, they have smaller orbital eccentricity. [70] Although there are attempts to explain it partly with a bias in the radial-velocity detection method and partly with long interactions of a quite high number of planets, the exact causes remain undetermined. [70] [74]
Jupiter – fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is a gas giant, along with Saturn, with the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, being ice giants ...
The Solar System has eight planets by the most restrictive definition of the term: the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis , which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to ...
The closest approach to the planet was on December 3, 1973, at a range of 132,252 kilometers (82,178 mi). During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the Solar System and heliosphere. [6]
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant , with an average radius of about nine times that of Earth . [ 27 ] [ 28 ] It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive.
Traditionally, each of the seven "planets" in the Solar System as known to the ancients was associated with, held dominion over, and "ruled" a certain metal (see also astrology and the classical elements). The list of rulership is as follows: The Sun rules Gold The Moon, Silver Mercury, Quicksilver/Mercury Venus, Copper Mars, Iron Jupiter, Tin ()
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, with more than twice the mass of all the other planets combined. [5] Consideration of sending a probe to Jupiter began as early as 1959. [6] NASA's Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) for Outer Solar System Missions considered the requirements for Jupiter orbiters and atmospheric probes.