Galileo probe (1995) — released from the Galileo orbiter five months before arrival, it hit Jupiter's atmosphere at roughly 47.4 km/s, the fastest atmospheric entry ever flown. Its ablative heat shield lost almost half its mass to friction heating before a parachute deployed near Mach 0.9. It then transmitted atmospheric composition, wind speed and lightning data for about 58 minutes before rising pressure (over 20 times Earth's, and climbing) crushed and silenced it roughly 150 km below the cloud tops.
Juno orbiter — arrived July 2016 on a highly elliptical, near-polar orbit (~90° inclination) chosen specifically to dip through the intense equatorial radiation belts quickly rather than linger in them. Each close pass ("perijove") brings it within a few thousand kilometers of the cloud tops, where its gravity and microwave radiometer instruments probe the deep interior and magnetic field that a purely equatorial orbit could never safely sample as often.
- Toggle between the two missions to compare a one-way atmospheric plunge with a repeating polar science orbit.
- Click any Galilean moon — Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto — for a short mission-relevant fact.