Leigh Fletcher, Planetary Scientist at the University of Leicester, giving a talk entitled "To Jupiter and beyond", on the Cosmos Stage at New Scientist Live 2019
Right now, millions of miles from home, an intrepid robotic spacecraft is hurtling across the skies of Jupiter. The Juno mission has been probing deeper into Jupiter than ever before. Beneath the swirling clouds of ammonia snowstorms and gargantuan lightning strikes, Juno joins a long line of sophisticated Jovian explorers, from Voyager to Cassini. In this talk, Leigh Fletcher will present the latest insights into this enormous world, and reveal why humankind must return to Jupiter to explore its potentially-habitable moons volcanic Io, Europa’s hidden subsurface ocean, giant Ganymede, and battered Callisto with ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), scheduled to depart from home in 2022. Leigh Fletcher specialises in exploring our solar system’s giant planets with robotic spacecraft and ground-based observatories. He is a co-investigator on the Cassini mission to Saturn, the JUICE mission to Jupiter, and a passionate advocate for future exploration of the distance ice giants. You can follow his research on twitter at
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Location: ExCel London, One Western Gateway, Royal Victoria Dock,
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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