Entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk believes that the moons of the planet Jupiter are full of many interesting things things.
„We will find a lot of interesting things on Jupiter's moons,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), commenting on a photo of Callisto, one of the four largest moons of the gas giant.
Jupiter is the fifth planet of the solar system. The average distance from the Sun is about 779 million km. The diameter of the planet at the equator is about 143 thousand km. Jupiter is approximately 317 times the size of Earth and 2.5 times more massive than all the planets in the Solar System combined. The giant planet is named after the supreme god in Greco-Roman mythology. The first study using a telescope was carried out in 1610 by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter (later named Ganymede, Europa, Io and Callisto).
In the fall of 2024, the United States plans to launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft for a detailed study of Europa, a moon of the giant planet. It is expected to reach the Jupiter system in 2030
Around 2030, China will send the Tianwen-4 mission to Jupiter and Callisto. In Russia, work is being done within the framework of the Laplace-P project. With the help of the Laplace-P1 orbiter, it is planned to conduct remote studies of Jupiter and Ganymede, and the Laplace-P2 lander will be intended for contact studies of the surface of this satellite.