Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within theSolar System.

Research and Exploration about Jupiter has a very long history.

Pre-telescopic research
The observation of Jupiter dates back to the Babylonian astronomers of the 7th or 8th century BC. The Chinese historian of astronomy, Xi Zezong, has claimed that Gan De, a Chinese astronomer, made the discovery of one ofJupiter's moons in 362 BC with the unaided eye. If accurate, this would [69][70] predate Galileo's discovery by nearly two millennia. In his 2nd century work theAlmagest, the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus constructed ageocentric planetary model based on deferents and epicycles to explain Jupiter's motion relative to the Earth, giving its orbital period [71] around the Earth as 4332.38 days, or 11.86 years. In 499, Aryabhata, amathematicianastronomer from the classical age of Indian mathematics andastronomy, also used a geocentric [72] model to estimate Jupiter's period as 4332.2722 days, or 11.86 years. In 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered the four largest moons of JupiterIo, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (now known as theGalilean moons)using a telescope; During the 1660s, Cassini used a new telescope to discover spots and colorful bands on Jupiter and observed that the planet appeared oblate; that is, flattened at the poles. In 1892, E. E. Barnard observed a fifth satellite of Jupiter with the 36-inch (910 mm) refractor at Lick Observatory inCalifornia.
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Flyby missions

Spacecraft

Closest approach

Distance

Pioneer 10

December 3, 1973

130,000 km

Pioneer 11

December 4, 1974

34,000 km

Voyager 1

March 5, 1979

349,000 km

Voyager 2

July 9, 1979

570,000 km

February 8, 1992 Ulysses February 4, 2004

[89]

408,894 km

In 1932, Rupert Wildt identified absorption bands of ammonia and methane in the spectra [79] of Jupiter. Three long-lived anticyclonic features termed white ovals were observed in 1938.

[89]

120,000,000 km

Radiotelescope research
Cassini December 30, 2000 10,000,000 km In 1955, Bernard Burke and Kenneth Franklin detected bursts of radio signals coming from Jupiter at 22.2 MHz

New Horizons February 28, 2007

2,304,535 km

Exploration with space probes

Since 1973 a number of automated spacecraft have visited Jupiter, most notably the Pioneer 10 space probe, the first spacecraft to get close enough to Jupiter to send back revelations about the properties and phenomena of the Solar System's largest planet. Beginning in 1973, several spacecraft have performed planetary flyby maneuvers that brought them within observation range of Jupiter. The Pioneer missions obtained the first close-up images of Jupiter's atmosphere and several of its moons.

So far the only spacecraft to orbit Jupiter is the Galileo orbiter, which went into orbit around Jupiter on December 7, 1995. It orbited the planet for over seven years, conducting multiple flybys of all the Galilean moons and Amalthea

Future probes and canceled missions

Mission Jupiter Juno Mission to Jupiter :NASA currently has a mission underway to study Jupiter in detail from
a polar orbit. Named Juno, the spacecraft was launched in August 2011, and will arrive Jupiter in late

to study the giant planet from an elliptical, polar orbit. Juno will repeatedly dive between the planet and its intense belts of charged particle radiation, coming only 5,000 kilometers (about 3,000 miles) from the cloud tops at closest approach.
2016

Juno's primary goal is to improve our understanding of Jupiter's formation and evolution. The spacecraft will spend a year investigating the planet's origins, interior structure, deep atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's study of Jupiter will help us to understand the history of our own solar system and provide new insight into how planetary systems form and develop in our galaxy and beyond.