For centuries the giant planets floated on the fringes of the solar system as distant objects in the eyepieces of astronomers. But in December 1973 mankind had its first close encounter with Jupiter. This episode charts the story of our discovery of these massive planets, from Galileo’s sighting of Jupiter's moons in 1610 to JPL's journeys to Uranus and Neptune nearly 400 years later. It explores the role the giant planets played in shaping the vast disk of stellar debris into the solar system we know today. Rings to radiation belts, moons to magnetospheres, each gas giant is at the heart of a solar system in miniature, revealing its secrets to only the boldest missions.
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