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Artist's depiction of Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter. The exploration of Jupiter has been conducted via close observations by automated spacecraft.It began with the arrival of Pioneer 10 into the Jovian system in 1973, and, as of 2024, has continued with eight further spacecraft missions in the vicinity of Jupiter and two more en route.
The spacecraft recorded important heliophysics data in early August 1972 by registering a solar shock wave when it was at a distance of 2.2 AU (330 million km; 200 million mi). [38] On July 15, 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, [4] located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The project planners expected ...
Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet. [4] The Jet Propulsion Laboratory built the Galileo spacecraft and managed the Galileo program for NASA. West Germany's Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm supplied the propulsion module.
The first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter was the Galileo mission, which reached the planet on December 7, 1995. [66] It remained in orbit for over seven years, conducting multiple flybys of all the Galilean moons and Amalthea. The spacecraft also witnessed the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 when it collided with Jupiter in 1994.
The spacecraft then launched the first probe to directly measure its atmosphere. Despite suffering major antenna problems, Galileo achieved the first asteroid flyby, of 951 Gaspra, and discovered the first asteroid moon, Dactyl, around 243 Ida. In 1994, Galileo observed Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9's collision with Jupiter. Jupiter's atmospheric ...
Pioneer 11's closer encounter with Jupiter allowed the spacecraft to discover Jupiter's intense radiation belts similar to Earth's Van Allen Belts. One of the peaks in charged particle flux was found near the orbit of Io. [1] Radio tracking during the encounters of both Pioneers with Io provided an improved estimate of the moon's mass.
First flyby of Jupiter. First spacecraft beyond the Inner Solar System. USA (NASA) Pioneer 10 [33] January 1974 First spacecraft to return data on a long-period comet. USA (NASA) Mariner 10 [34] 5 February 1974: First mission to explore two planets in a single mission (Mercury and Venus). First photograph of Venus from space.
The first spacecraft to visit an asteroid was Pioneer 10, which flew past an unnamed asteroid on 2 August 1972; a distant incidental encounter while the probe was en route to Jupiter. The first dedicated mission was NEAR Shoemaker , which was launched in February 1996, and entered orbit around 433 Eros in February 2000, having first flown past ...