It is not like in the movies where you are dodging asteroids at every second. It is a… The space is very big and the asteroids are a long distance apart, so you could travel through it quite safely. 

 

The next thing you run into you can’t avoid: the leading edge of Jupiter’s magnetosphere. It is invisible, but the sound is like a signpost.

 

It is like you hit something, so you are due to do to do and then “Bang!” And so, oh, now we are in the Jupiter system.

 

Want to explore further? Be warned. You have just crossed the threshold into the most hazardous piece of space real estate in the solar system.

 

At Jupiter’s magnetosphere, there is almost nothing that can protect you. That is a kind of / ‘Don't enter this zone at any costs’, and if you do, you’d better be prepared to pay in terms of your electronics. You know you are toast.

 

Step inside Jupiter’s raging magnetic field and you enter a radiation hotzone of staggering intensity, where incoming charged particles from the sun are whipped into a relativistic frenzy. Buffeted by the solar wind, the magnetic maelstrom streams back almost as far as the orbit of Saturn.

 

The magnetosphere of Jupiter, the largest thing in the solar system, em… if it were visible from the earth, it would be the size of the full moon in the sky.

 

This was like a magnet to NASA, setting off for deep space for the first time in the early 1970s.

 

What Pioneer told us was that Jupiter’s radiation belts were even more intense than we had anticipated. And that meant that our next mission, Voyager suddenly went into a rework, real fast to put more shielding on board, shields up captain, because we knew we were gonna be getting a lot of radiation dose.