Jupiter taken by Juno. Credit: NASA
Some planets have magnetic fields that trap and re-direct charged particles from the sun into intense radiation belts.
Earth has the Van Allen belts, and Apollo lunar missions in the 1960's and 1970's had to find safe ways through them. But, Jupiter's radiation is way stronger...
"Well below the Jovian cloud tops is a layer of hydrogen under such incredible pressure it acts as an electrical conductor. Scientists believe that the combination of this metallic hydrogen along with Jupiter’s fast rotation — one day on Jupiter is only 10 hours long — generates a powerful magnetic field that surrounds the planet with electrons, protons and ions traveling at nearly the speed of light. Any spacecraft that enters this field of high-energy particles encounters the harshest radiation environment in the solar system."
Source: "Juno Mission to Jupiter: June 23 Lecture With Dr. Jack Connerney", June 20, 2016, by Ellen Terrell
So I imagined a future time when astronauts would have to take precautions like living on a base far from Jupiter and using special gear when traveling near Jupiter.
All this study about Jupiter and radiation got my space fiction juices flowing, and I created this Ramone Rocketeer post: https://ramonerocketeer.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-hazards-of-jupiter.html
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| Art from "The Hazards of Jupiter" by Mickey Kulp |
