NOVA

Half a billion miles from the sun...

The giant of the planets...

It's very violent

and it's very intimidating.

Jupiter.

Of all the worlds in the solar system...

It's the biggest planet.

It sort of pushed a lot of the planets around.

It's the bully of the solar system.

Jupiter's immense size

gives it incredible influence.

Jupiter is the most powerful gravitational object,

second to the sun.

And while Jupiter is at a safe distance from Earth today,

in the past, it drew much closer.

Four-and-a-half billion years ago,

it embarked on a rampage across the solar system,

leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

We can think of the asteroid belt

as a planetary graveyard.

Jupiter transformed the destiny of the planets,

and could even have changed the course of life on Earth.

It is the most influential planet of our cosmic home.

"The Planets: Jupiter."

Right now, on "NOVA."

Major funding for "NOVA" is provided by the following:

They'll say no one can see us

That we're estranged and all alone

They believe nothing can reach us

And pull us out of the boundless gloom

They're wrong

They're wrong

They're wrong

Beyond the edge of the inner solar system

and the desolate wasteland of the asteroid belt...

is the gas giant Jupiter.

Its serene marbled appearance

disguises a planet in turmoil,

where violent storms rage through clouds

more than a thousand miles deep.

When we look at Jupiter,

we find one of the most amazing places we've seen

in the solar system.

It's very mysterious.

It's covered by clouds

that hide what's underneath.

But Jupiter is a planet as influential

as it is beautiful.

Jupiter is by far the biggest planet.

Its mass is greater than 300 times that of the Earth.

So it is the most powerful gravitational object,

second to the sun.

Four-and-a-half billion years ago,

Jupiter's gravity had devastating consequences

for the worlds around it.

Jupiter had this incredible effect that helped

to shape the solar system overall.

Clearing material from the inner solar system,

Jupiter transformed the destiny of the planets...

Including our own.

You're looking at the crime scene...

The structure of the solar system, what it is today...

And trying to piece together what happened

four billion years ago.

It is an amazingly intriguing problem.

Jupiter is a world with a dark past.

And you don't have to look far

to see the evidence.

In the northern Arizona desert,

this is Barringer Crater.

It was formed 50,000 years ago,

when an iron-nickel asteroid 150 feet across

hit Earth at 27,000 miles per hour...

An asteroid that was likely thrown in our direction

by Jupiter.

So what is it that enables Jupiter to influence the Earth

from so far away?

And how did it grow to such dominance?

Only by seeing Jupiter close up

could we begin to answer those questions.

In 1972,

Pioneer 10 becomes the first spacecraft

to cross the asteroid belt.

Before Pioneer, we really had no idea

whether or not a spacecraft would be able

to survive all the hazards of a trip like that.

The images brought back to us really blew our minds

in terms of what we could see of Jupiter.

To have the incredible detail

about the dynamics of the atmosphere

really was new and different to us.

Now the world wants to know, "What have we learned?"

During its brief fly-by,

Pioneer observes Jupiter for four days...

Proving that missions to the outer solar system

are possible.

We have ignition

and we have lift-off of the Titan-Centaur,

carrying the first of two Voyager spacecraft

to extend man's senses farther into the solar system

than ever before.

The Voyager spacecraft see Jupiter's Earth-sized red spot

in unprecedented detail...

Discover the planet's rings,

and capture the first detailed images

of Jupiter's moons.

It wasn't until Voyager

went up-close and personal,

and took amazing pictures of the moons,

that we really began to get a sense of just how complex

and the variety

of the worlds around Jupiter.

The icy surfaces of Europa, so different, so dynamic.

The volcanos on Io,

Ganymede all broken up,

and then Callisto was just this big icy surface

covered in impact craters.

We now know the giant planet has more than 79 moons.

Jupiter is a world so large, its immense gravity

has assembled a solar system in miniature.

So how did it grow to such incredible size?

T-minus ten,

nine, eight, seven...

In 2011, the Juno spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral.

Ignition,

and lift-off of the Atlas V with Juno,

on a trek to Jupiter.

Its mission:

to uncover the secrets of Jupiter's formation.

When we launched the Juno spacecraft

away from the Earth out towards Jupiter,

we didn't have enough speed to get away

out of the gravity of the sun.

So, we actually had to come back to Earth,

get a gravity assist from Earth, and then go out to Jupiter.

After traveling for five years,

on July 4, 2016,

the spacecraft finally arrives.

It's an incredible moment for the science team.

You see all these swirls,

you see all sorts of spots coming up.

You see all these vortices.

You see dramatic storm systems interacting.

It's mind-blowingly beautiful pictures

that this little camera has been taking.

JunoCam was able to see the Great Red Spot

from up close.

We can see height to the clouds,

we can see features that look like storms.

Maybe it's hailing or snowing ammonia.

On Jupiter.

And the most startling thing that we saw

from JunoCam's imagery

was that the poles of Jupiter are actually blue.

Juno's objective

is to look as close at Jupiter and as deep inside

as we possibly can

to understand as best as we can, what is it made of?

What is its interior structure like?

Because the answers to those questions

help to tell us where and how Jupiter might have formed.

By analyzing the planet's

magnetic and gravitational fields,

Juno is able to look deep into Jupiter's interior.

And what we found is that there is a lot of mass inside.

That mass is the core of the planet

around which the hydrogen was pulled in

in those early stages of solar system formation.

By discovering the planet's core,

Juno is helping us

to reconstruct Jupiter's first moments...

A story that begins very early in the solar system's history.

Nearly five billion years ago,

a distant exploding star

sends a shockwave across the galaxy...

Causing the cloud of gas and dust

that would become our solar system

to collapse,

forming the sun.

Farther out,

Jupiter's core is already beginning to grow,

gathering in vast clouds of gas.

After 50 million years,

the sun's nuclear furnace ignites...

The light of its first dawn

revealing Jupiter.

While the terrestrial worlds are little more than rubble,

Jupiter is fully formed,

allowing it to shape everything that follows.

So when it comes to setting the stage,

setting the structure of how the solar system is going to evolve,

Jupiter plays the biggest role.

It is the most influential planet of our cosmic home.

Over the next 100 million years,

the four rocky planets of the inner solar system

form in their familiar positions:

Mercury...

Venus...

Earth...

then Mars.