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Cassini–Huygens also flew past Jupiter for a gravity assist on its mission to explore Saturn. Only three of the missions to the outer planets have been orbiters: Galileo orbited Jupiter for eight years, while Cassini orbited Saturn for thirteen years. Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter. [88] Pioneer 11: Jupiter 6 April 1973 4 December 1974 608 days (1 yr, 7 mo, 29 d) Pioneer 11 flew by Jupiter. [89] Saturn 1 September 1979 2340 days (6 yr, 4 mo, 27 d) Pioneer 11 was the first spacecraft to fly by Saturn. Mars 4: Mars 21 July 1973 10 February 1974 205 days (6 months, 21 days)
Jupiter as seen by the space probe Cassini. Flights from Earth to other planets in the Solar System have a high energy cost. It requires almost the same amount of energy for a spacecraft to reach Jupiter from Earth's orbit as it does to lift it into orbit in the first place.
They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment to explore the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and potentially also the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune - to fly near them while collecting data for transmission back to Earth.
To gain momentum while already in flight, the trajectory of the Cassini mission included several gravitational slingshot maneuvers: two fly-by passes of Venus, one more of the Earth, and then one of the planet Jupiter. The terrestrial flyby was the final instance when the probe posed any conceivable danger to human beings.
Timelapse of Voyager 2 approaching Jupiter. The plains of Pluto, as seen by New Horizons after its nearly 10-year voyage. Remotely guided space probes have flown by all of the observed planets of the Solar System from Mercury to Neptune, with the New Horizons probe having flown by the dwarf planet Pluto and the Dawn spacecraft currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres.
The bow shock of Jupiter's magnetosphere was reached on November 16, as indicated by a drop in the velocity of the solar wind from 451 km/s (280 mi/s) to 225 km/s (140 mi/s). The magnetopause was passed through a day later. The spacecraft instruments confirmed that the magnetic field of Jupiter was inverted compared to that of Earth.
View of Saturn from Cassini, taken in March 2004, shortly before the spacecraft's orbital insertion in July 2004. This article provides a timeline of the Cassini–Huygens mission (commonly called Cassini). Cassini was a collaboration between the United States' NASA, the European Space Agency ("ESA"), and the Italian Space Agency ("ASI") to send a probe to study the Saturnian system, including ...