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With at least 61 moons (as of September 2003) and several rings circling it, Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. This giant planet is surrounded by an enormous magnetic field called the magnetosphere, which has a million times the volume of Earth's magnetosphere. Its immense, complex atmosphere includes the Great Red Spot, a 300-year-old storm that is almost the size of three Earths.
NASA's Galileo spacecraft
orbited Jupiter from December 1995 to September 2003, providing a stream of discoveries
about the planet, its four largest moons and the surrounding environment. The
moon Europa shows evidence of a deep ocean of melted water under an icy crust.
Closer to Jupiter, the moon Io is continuously resurfacing itself with fresh
volcanic eruptions. Io's internal heat comes from tidal flexing due to Jupiter's
gravitational pull. Galileo also dropped a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere to
make the first in-place studies of the planet's clouds and winds. Galileo was
preceded by NASA's Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft,
which flew past Jupiter in the 1970s. Future missions that may follow up on Galileo's
discoveries about Europa, which make that moon a tempting target for investigating
the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
For more information, visit NASA's Solar System Exploration site.
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