Planets Expansion Required Some or all of the features on this page requires the Planets Expansion in-app purchase.
Jupiter is a gas giant and the largest planet in the Solar System. It has colorful bands of red, orange, yellow, brown and white, with blue at its poles. It was added in the 1.4 update, but is only available if the Planets Expansion has been purchased. The planet's thick atmosphere is well-suited for aerobraking and using aerocapture.
While it appears to have a surface, a rocket cannot land on Jupiter. In Jupiter’s code, terrain collision has been edited in such a way that a rocket cannot in any way touch it, similar to the Sun.
The atmosphere of Jupiter is in an orange hue. The atmosphere is 5 times as thick as Earth, similar to Venus, but in real life the pressure is at between 2 and 6 times as thick as Earth's. Rockets that enter the lower layers of the atmosphere would spin uncontrollably, and would slow down so much that parachutes, when deployed when in the upper layers of the atmosphere would then become destroyed, along with the spacecraft. Try deploying the parachute at a lower altitude (e.g. 200 meters or so) from the surface level.
Due to the high pressure and velocity of entering Jupiter's atmosphere, a rocket passing through its atmosphere will burn up quickly, with or without a heat shield.
In real life, the pressure is so intense that the Galileo space probe got crushed at the pressure of about 25 bar, or 25 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth.
Jupiter's atmospheric pressure at different altitudes.
Like all of the other celestial bodies, Jupiter's atmospheric pressure decreases by altitude (except Europa). Jupiter's atmosphere reaches half its atmospheric pressure at 4500 meters. The scale height can be found at roughly 6800 meters. Above 48 kilometers, the atmosphere starts to turn blue and can be used for small-scale aerobraking. At 100 km, the atmosphere turns fully blue and is now considered as a vacuum. At 240 kilometers, the blue hue fades into space.
Terrain[]
Jupiter is a gas giant so it has a gassy surface. Rockets trying to land on Jupiter would instead get deeper and deeper below Jupiter's sea level until they reach the core, where it will experience glitches.
Natural satellites[]
Jupiter has 4 moons (commonly known as the Galilean moons): Io, which has many volcanoes; Europa, which is easy to explore; Ganymede, which has rough terrain; Callisto, which has a cratered surface. The moons of Jupiter are special because they have their own difficulty to get there.
Io[]
Io
Europa
Io is the innermost of the moons of Jupiter. It has many volcanoes and has a large gravity slightly higher than the Moon's.
Europa[]
Europa is the smallest moon of Jupiter and the easiest to explore. It has a low gravity and a smooth and icy surface.
Ganymede[]
Ganymede is the largest of the moons of Jupiter, the largest in the solar system, and the hardest to explore. It has a rough terrain and icy surface.
Callisto[]
Ganymede
Callisto
Callisto is the second-largest and outermost moon of Jupiter. It has a low gravity and has a cratered and icy surface.
What to do on Jupiter?[]
Jupiter has a huge gravity. It has a large sphere of influence (2.9 million kilometers in size) and many moons. It can be used for the following activities:
Gravity assists[]
Jupiter gravity assists are used to a spacecraft when they reach far away objects (such as another planet, a Kuiper belt object or even the far reaches of the solar system).
Grand Tour of the Solar System[]
Doing so would recreate the Voyager probes' missions; but you must wait for planetary alignments to conduct this mission.
Exploring all planets of the solar system[]
This is very complex. You must do it with a planet pack with objects past Jupiter. You must also assemble rocket stages that orbit planets. Doing this would cost large amounts of fuel and this would take a lot of time.
Escaping the solar system[]
Like the Voyagers did in their mission, you can use Jupiter to escape the solar system to explore interstellar space. You can also explore other stars such as the Alpha Centauri system, the Kepler system or just like that.
Continuation[]
You could build a Jupiter space station, but due to the size of Jupiter, orbits are hard to align. You can also do it in Jupiter's moons, since they are smaller.
A Jupiter return mission could be done, but it would take a lot of time and fuel.
There are so many things to do in Jupiter other than that.
A Jupiter-4 mission to visit all of the Jupiter's moon (thus the name) is really hard and probably needs a lander and command module (like in Apollo missions) and still might not be enough
Gallery[]
A rocket on Earth that is capable of getting to Jupiter
A sneak peak of Jupiter in 1.4. The Great Red Spot can be seen on the top-left limb of Jupiter.
A view of Jupiter in 1.4
Information[]
Jupiter's size is comparable to Mars's size in real life.
Jupiter's upper atmosphere is the same color as the lower atmosphere rather than blue
Trivia[]
Jupiter is the most massive planet in the solar system. Jupiter is 318 times more massive than Earth but a thousandth of the mass of the Sun.
Jupiter's diameter can fit roughly 11 Earths side-by-side.
If all the planets in the solar system are combined, they would account roughly 2/5 the mass of Jupiter.
Jupiter is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium, but also some traces of methane, ammonia, ethane, water and hydrogen deuteride.
Jupiter is massive enough to have a major influence on the barycenter of the Solar System, but SFS’ physics engine does not support this.
Jupiter's atmosphere is the densest of any celestial body (0.025 (5 Earths)), the same density as Venus's atmosphere (0.025 (5 Earths)) and much denser than Mars's atmosphere (0.0008 (18 times less dense than Earth)).
Jupiter is sometimes called a "failed star" due to not being massive enough to have internal pressure and temperature to cause hydrogen and helium to be fused.
Jupiter must be 80× more massive than it was today to form a second star in the solar system.
After 1.4 was released, Jupiter had a Great Red Spot on it. But for some reason it was removed/switched to the north pole view.
Three of Jupiter's Galilean moons, Io, Europa and Ganymede follow a 4:2:1 resonance; that means that for every time Ganymede follows a single revolution around Jupiter, Europa follows two revolutions; Io follows four.
Jupiter's texture is pointed at the north pole.
There's a bug that will render Jupiter to have a surface.
Jupiter with rings
Jupiter has four faint rings. These are the Halo ring, the Main ring, and the Amalthea and Thebe gossamer rings.
Jupiter can be used as gravity assists for escaping the solar system, and for reaching distant objects in the solar system quickly (e.g. Saturn).
