“Exploring Jupiter and its moons” was the title of the lecture given by Jared R. Espley at Salão Nobre. The NASA engineer talked about the beginning of the solar system and explained that planets, including Earth, were born from the “remains of something [dead stars].”

Jared Espley, who is responsible for NASA’s Juno spacecraft sent to Jupiter in 2011, shared with the audience the engineering challenges of sending a probe like Juno to Jupiter. According to Espley, one of these challenges, was to know the amount of energy needed to keep the probe and the several equipment operating. Solar panels about the size of a bus was the solution found.

Missions such as Juno allow us to “have a basic idea of how planets are formed” and to understand the composition of Jupiter and its 4 moons (Galilean satellites). However, as Jared Espley pointed out, much is still unknown about Jupiter. According to the NASA engineer “we have a basic idea of how planets are formed, but details are yet unknown”.

At the end of the session, Jared Espley referred to two NASA’s missions: “CLIPPER” (NASA Europa Mission), which is planned for launch in 2020 and NASA Europa Lander, which is planned for launch in the 2020s.