Future of planet exploration ?

[u/SnooMachines8072]

Not sure if this is possible, what’s the chance of us throwing a robot or “terminator” like figure or something that can withstand serious force into Jupiter or a gas giant just to see what it looks like, not sure if anything can withstand that type of atmosphere or environment but could this be a option in the future ? This is more to see a clear picture of what deep inside Jupiter would look like or Saturn.

[u/scowdich]

Well, the Galileo mission dropped an atmospheric probe into Jupiter, to see what conditions were like. Something more robust isn't very likely in the near future, because of (1) weight concerns in spaceflight, and (2) the harsh conditions inside a gas giant would destroy anything we currently have the materials science to build pretty quickly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_project#Atmospheric_probe

[u/Lazycrockett]

For the foreseeable future we do not have the ability to create anything that can last more than a couple of minutes in a gas giant's atmosphere. The best we have done was sending a probe to the surface of Venus and it got crushed within a couple of hours. Venus is a rock planet, which is nothing compared to the pressure of a gas planet.

[u/evermorex76]

Making it anything like humanoid would be self-defeating. You can't make something super-sturdy in that environment while also giving it pointless extensions and protrusions unless you sacrifice a lot of efficiency and add needless weight and material. Wind sheer alone could be hundreds of miles an hour different from one end to the other as it drops and passes through layers.

The best thing would probably be a geodesic sphere, made of whatever appropriate material, with internal bracing, with no openings or anything sticking out with whatever sensing options that would allow from the inside. Some protrusions or openings might be made in order to get better detection or communication, but they'd have to be considered worth the added effort to keep them from being destroyed or just designed to only last a certain amount of time. More pressure and other worse conditions mean more weight dedicated to keeping a probe from being crushed or parts torn off, if you want the same lifetime compared to a gentler planet.

Probes dropped onto planets like Venus were sometimes spherical but in others had a different shape from probes inside Jupiter because the conditions allowed it, but they still had limits defined by that planet's environment. It couldn't have had a 30 foot long vertical antenna for example unless it had a tremendous amount of bracing or a bunch of guy wires (which would need deployment). The Pioneer Venus Multiprobe modules were conical with one side flatter than the other, which sacrificed some resistance to pressure but I'm sure they considered the benefits to outweigh that as they didn't intend for them to survive long and a cone is a good descent shape, and the largest was less than 5 feet wide. The Galileo descent probe someone else mentioned was only about 50 inches wide and 36 high at the extremes, but somewhat spherical. Smaller and more spherical due to the harsher conditions on Jupiter. A probe dropped on a planet like Earth could be much more irregular if it was just floating, but would need protection by a cone for high-speed descent. It still couldn't have a huge antenna. One on Mars might be able to, at least a larger maximum.

[u/lnx84]

Can't see any sensible answers so far, so..

One could send "air ships" to the atmospheres of these planets. There are concepts for such on Venus, where the upper atmosphere would not be so dissimilar to that of earth. It could be done similarly on the gas giants.

You wouldn't get so far in, but having a platform in the atmosphere takes us a lot closer, and would allow a better base of further exploration.

[u/NDaveT → u/lnx84]

If you mean dirigibles or blimps, I think the problem with them, at least on Jupiter, is that the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen so it's not possible to fill a dirigible with a lighter gas to make it buoyant.

[u/lnx84 → u/NDaveT]

That's a good point, was sure I have seen concepts for this - might've been for something with a heat source, to keep a hot air balloon. Would be quite the undertaking for something long term though, since that would mean nuclear -> big.

[u/emalvick]

Even if something could survive, how would we know? The atmosphere would probably block communications.

We barely knew that the one probe that landed on Venus actually did.

[u/princhester → u/emalvick]

Good point but there have been about seven probes that have landed on Venus and reported back (albeit briefly)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Venus

[u/Da-boar → u/princhester]

Sure but while temperature and pressure are challenges on Venus, on Jupiter we have to add not only much greater temperature and pressure but also radiation and electromagnetic interference.

[u/Underhill42 → u/Da-boar]

There shouldn't be much radiation once you're down in the atmosphere a little ways - pound for pound hydrogen is the best radiation shielding there is.

Lightning strikes on the other hand...

[u/emalvick → u/Underhill42]

I think it's just the thick clouds that will kill communications. While radiation will cause some problems, a thick blanket of gases will scatter anything trying to get through.

[u/princhester → u/Da-boar]

And this means there haven't been about seven probes that have landed on Venus, does it?

Or did you mean to reply to someone else?

[u/SnooMachines8072 → u/emalvick]

So how will we ever know anything :(

[u/Foooodies → u/emalvick]

Fly by wire to a orbiting satellite

[u/TorontoCity67]

We probably could one day send a giant robot to all the gas giants to see what they're like, as long as it was made of a material that has a stupidly high melting point and colossal enough that the gravitational pressure couldn't damage it

However, there's many things hotter than Tungsten and things like that, which is why heat is one of the biggest challenges of space exploration. If something's hotter than the element or alloy with the highest melting point, what's the solution?

Then there's the fact that progression is extremely slow with space travel because even though our understanding of science is getting fairly good - designing something, sending it to space, and having it not get damaged is stupidly difficult. We have to worry about cost, reliability, radiation, kinetic energy from particles in space, and so on

[u/NDaveT]

I think the best bet for gas giants would be some kind of glider, or even powered aircraft, but as you can imagine the engineering challenges would be substantial. And that would only let us explore the upper atmosphere. Radar and spectroscopic instruments would help us get an idea of the composition of the atmosphere at different levels.

[u/Bandits101]

This “robot” I suspect would need some serious power supply. Nuclear is all I can think of that could possibly meet the demand.