How long will it take humans to travel to Jupiter?

Jupiter is one of the 5 planets visible to the naked eye at night and, along with the Sun and Moon, is used by many cultures to denote a day of the week, and it is possible that this is also the the reason we have seven days in a week.

Today, Jupiter is considered the "king" of the planets in the Solar System due to its enormous size: excluding the Sun, it has two and a half times the total mass of all the planets. other Solar System combined.

Jupiter is considered the "king" of the planets in the Solar System

According to historical records, we can know that humans have been observing and studying Jupiter for more than 2,000 years. In the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei's discovery overturned the (old) world view that all objects in the Solar System revolved around the Earth, and helped strengthen Nicolaus Copernicus' idea of ​​heliocentric theory.

Today, we are no longer satisfied with just observing the planets through telescopes, and as a result, many space exploration missions have been born, including the mission to explore Jupiter. But how long before we can accomplish this mission?

If we want to know how long it will take to travel to Jupiter, we need to know how far it is. Since both Earth and Jupiter are in constant motion, the answer to distance will always change. The closest possible distance between the two planets is 365 million miles (nearly 587 million km), and the furthest is 601 million miles (980 million km).

The fastest man has ever traveled (manned spacecraft mission) was 24,800 mph (almost 40,000 km/h) during the Apollo 10 mission. If we could travel at that speed for the whole time the trip will take from 613 days to 1,009 days, depending on the positions of the planets.

During the 1970s, four separate probes were sent: Pioneers 10 and 11, and Voyagers 1 and 2. All four probes traveled directly to Jupiter's orbit at extremely high speeds. In 2006, the New Horizons probe traveled from 36,000 to 47,000 mph and orbited Jupiter for 405 days before continuing toward Pluto.

Although all of these probes have reached Jupiter, none have made a permanent stop at Jupiter's orbit. The Voyager probes then left the Solar System and New Horizons headed for the Kuiper Belt.

To date, only two spacecraft have traveled to Jupiter and stayed there: Galileo and Juno. Both probes followed a more coherent route to Jupiter, using the planets' gravity to gain the necessary speed and blasting through the asteroid belt, entering the star's orbit. Moc. It took Galileo more than six years to orbit Jupiter, and Juno did the same in almost five years. But that's just probes, and what we're really aiming for is doing roving missions with manned spacecraft.

 A trip to Jupiter would take more than six years for a one-way trip alone.

In fact, the scope of our manned trips into outer space is still only the Moon. Humanity's last trip there was in 1972 and in the future we will return there in 2025 (at the earliest) on the Artemis 3 mission, which is expected to take about three days. NASA's clear plan is to use these missions as the foundation for building missions to Mars in the 2030s.

According to NASA, the simplest, and most fuel-efficient route to Mars would take nine months for a one-way trip and 21 months for a round trip.

If we extrapolate the method used to calculate this route, a similar trip to Jupiter would take more than six years for a one-way trip alone. NASA also estimates that a four-person crew would need 8,000 pounds (nearly 3,629 kg) of food per year, meaning a trip to Jupiter with four people would need to carry 48,000 pounds (21,772 kg) of food alone. to get there and even more to make the return trip.

However, the reality is not so simple, because food as well as all life-supporting and scientific equipment needs to be launched into space from Earth. That weight will take longer to catch up to the speed of the moving ship, and the potential duration of the mission will also be far greater than the mere calculation we just talked about.

If we can ignore the problem of weight and food, the journey to Jupiter will not be easy.

Astronauts when leaving the limits of Earth's gravity will face many challenges. One of the main dangers is radiation. In addition to the constant bombardment of radiation from the Sun, astronauts will be exposed to an array of cosmic rays that can lead to genetic damage and cancer.

Spending a lot of time in space also causes psychological challenges. Long-term space travel can lead to anxiety, worsening interactions with other crew members. Isolation from family and friends, along with a monotonous work schedule, only made these symptoms worse. And these are the problems that contemporary astronauts face. We'll have to fix these and new problems before we even consider sending anyone to Mars, let alone Jupiter.

Spending a lot of time in space also causes psychological challenges.

Despite facing such numerous challenges, why do we still want to go to Jupiter?

One of the things that has always fascinated us about Jupiter comes from the fact that it resembles a microcosm of the Solar System. Like countless planets orbiting the Sun, Jupiter also has a host of celestial bodies to accompany it on its journey around the Sun. Although Jupiter is a gas giant with no solid surface to land a spacecraft, it does have 79 rocky Moons that we can explore.

Four of those Moons are significantly larger than the others, with gravity similar to our own. The first three moons - Io, Europa and Ganymede - are too close to Jupiter and they receive too much radiation, so landing here is not safe for humans. But the fourth Moon, Callisto, receives significantly less radiation than the other three. It is also suspected that it has an ocean of liquid water below the surface and could support life.

In the early 2000s, a study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of a crewed mission to Callisto. They conclude that won't happen until at least the 2040s, and it will require new types of propulsion that haven't been tested in space before. But, assuming everything can be done as calculated in this study, the round trip mission to Jupiter could take between 652 and 1,661 days.