What Would Happen If We Tried to Land on Jupiter?

An Imaginary Voyage into the Unforgiving Realm of Jupiter.

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has long fascinated scientists and space enthusiasts. Its turbulent atmosphere, massive storms, and intriguing mysteries make it a tantalizing target for exploration. However, the idea of landing on Jupiter is more science fiction than fact due to the extreme conditions found on the gas giant.

Let's start the journey

Jupiter has no solid surface, only layers of gas that get denser and hotter as you go deeper. If you tried to land on Jupiter, you would not have a pleasant experience. Unlike terrestrial planets like Earth or even Mars, Jupiter is a gas giant composed mainly of hydrogen and helium.

Here’s what would happen:

• As you enter the top of the atmosphere, you would be traveling at 110,000 mph under the pull of Jupiter’s gravity. But brace yourself. You would quickly hit the denser atmosphere below, which would hit you like a wall. It would not be enough to stop you, though.
• After about 3 minutes, you would reach the cloud tops 155 miles below. Here, you would experience the full brunt of Jupiter’s rotation. Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet in our solar system. One day lasts about 9.5 Earth hours. This creates powerful winds that can whip around the planet at more than 300 mph.
• About 75 miles below the clouds, you would reach the limit of human exploration. The Galileo probe made it this far when it dove into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1995. It only lasted 58 minutes before losing contact and being eventually destroyed by the crushing pressure. Down here, the pressure is nearly 100 times what it is at the Earth’s surface.
• By 430 miles down, the pressure is 1,150 times higher. You would feel a force equal to four elephants standing on your chest. And you would not be able to see anything, so you would have to rely on instruments to explore your surroundings.
• By 2,500 miles down, the pressure is 2 million times higher than at Earth’s surface. And the temperature is 6,100 ºF, which is hotter than the surface of the sun. At this point, hydrogen gas turns into a liquid metal. This metallic hydrogen makes up most of Jupiter’s interior and creates its powerful magnetic field.
• By 13,000 miles down, you would reach Jupiter’s core. The core is made of rock and ice, but it’s not solid. It’s more like a hot and dense soup with a temperature of 43,000 ºF and a pressure of 50 million times that of the Earth’s surface. This is where most of Jupiter’s mass is concentrated.
• Even if you somehow survived to the core, you would be trapped inside the planet by its immense gravity. You would need a rocket with more than 60 km/s of escape velocity to get out of Jupiter’s atmosphere, which is more than 10 times the speed of a bullet. No human-made spacecraft has ever achieved such speed.

So, as you can see, landing on Jupiter is impossible. You would be crushed, burned, and torn apart long before you reached the core. And even if you somehow survived, you would not be able to get out. You would be trapped on the planet forever.

Thanks for reading :)

Follow me for more such articles on science and history.