A Traveller's Guide to the Planets (2010)

Jupiter (5/5)

A dive below the clouds reveals the planet's strange secret: It's really more like a star in composition. See what today's bigger and better telescopes are revealing about the moons in Jupiter's extraordinary kingdom, from Io, a spicy world of fire and brimstone, to Europa, where a warm, salty ocean hides beneath the surface.

It’s the ultimate in adventure travel, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Today’s super space traveler must endure drastic climates that shift from 840 degrees in the sun to minus 275 degrees in the shade, crushing gravity, acid smog, and blistering radiation. But the sights — from Jupiter’s churning red eye to Saturn’s glittering rings — are out of this world. Blast-off with A Traveler’s Guide To The Planets, National Geographic Channel’s ultimate travel guide to the Solar System. Learn what to pack, which planet has the best sights, and where to park the rover. In each one hour episode, see stunning images of each planet including highly detailed images captured by today’s ultra high-tech telescopes. Advanced animation takes you up close and personal with these distant worlds, as we plunge through space to get a better look at the neighbors. Then, travel with NASA experts to extreme environments on our own planet like Chile’s Atacama Desert or Hawaii’s volcanoes that are providing scientists with valuable insights into what a trip to one of our planetary neighbors might be like. And see the next generation of space probes as they are prepared for upcoming missions that may bring the dream of interplanetary travel even closer than ever.

Would I like to go to Mars Oh in a heart beat. Absolutely. If there was any way for me to go to Mars I wouldn’t be screwing around with robots, I would want to go myself … The visual experience that you get from looking at the rovers’ pictures is intentionally like what you would get if you were looking out the visor of your helmet and a space suit on Mars.”
— Planetary scientist Steve Squyres, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission

Read more: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/travelers-guide...