Jupiter Timeline of Events

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Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune...

Timeline of Events

1610

1.7.1610

Galileo Galilei observes three of the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time. He named them, and in turn the four are called the Galilean moons. Ganymede not discovered by him until January 13.

1.13.1610

Galileo Galilei discovers Ganymede, 4th moon of Jupiter.

1973

12.3.1973

Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

1979

3.5.1979

America's Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.

1994

7.16.1994

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collides with Jupiter. Impacts continue until July 22.

7.20.1994

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's Fragment Q1 hits Jupiter.

1995

12.7.1995

The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

1998

3.2.1998

Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

2001

10.15.2001

NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.

2003

9.21.2003

''Galileo'' mission is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.

2007

2.28.2007

Jupiter flyby of the New Horizons Pluto-observer spacecraft.