Is it possible to make a landing on a gaseous planet?

Question

Would it be possible to land on such gaseous giants as Jupiter and Neptune, or would you simply fall through?

Answer 1

It depends what you mean by 'landing'. Gas giant planets tend to have large solid cores, but the temperatures and pressures on the surface of these cores are both very high. The area above that is liquid, and slowly turns from liquid to gas higher up. The most realistic way to 'land' on a gas giant planet would actually be to use a vehicle equipped with a balloon that it can fill with light gas. You could enter the gas giant's atmosphere in the normal fashion, deploy a parachute once you're going slowly enough, and then blow up the balloon, drop the parachute and just float around in the atmosphere taking measurements and sending signals back to Earth (probably by means of a relay orbiting the gas giant). The vehicle would not actually have landed on a solid surface, but it would be in a stable configuration inside the planetary environment. There is actually no significant technical challenge to building and using such a vehicle, and a Jupiter atmospheric probe could be built and launched with more or less current technology; such probes have been proposed by many scientists, space advocacy groups and science fiction writers.

Answer 2

they presumably have solid surfaces down there somewhere, but you just can't see them. the temperature and pressure would be ridiculously high, too high for any probe to survive. you might deploy a balloon probe, though. that's been done on venus - gas giants might be more of a challenge.

Answer 3

I don't think you'd sink all the way through. you sure wouldn't land on the surface. you'd sink deep inside then land on either a rock or liquid core, or just get mired in gas that is too think to move through but not really a solid.

Answer 4

Surely if the planet was purely gaseous it does not constitute being a planet yet.

I would say that there must be something more solid in it's make-up to be classified as a planet and would therefore be able to be landed upon. Not sure how stable it would be though.

Answer 5

How about this question:

Is it possible to land on a cloud?

Your answer would depend on the DENSITY of the gas versus the DENSITY of the lander.  In most cases we think that the density of metal is greater than the density of gas, so the lander would fall through to the center of the planet, or at least until such time as gravity crushed it.

Answer 6

Yes, you can land on them.  Their cores are largely liquid, I believe.

Answer 7

Jupiter's volume is largely gas, with an incredibly dense liquid metallic core.  A landing would be possible, assuming you could build something what wouldn't get destroyed by the gravitational stresses, but retreiving the lander would not.  At least, that's my introspection of this idea.  There would be no way to escape the immense gravitational pressures so dangerously close to Jupiter's center of gravity.  

I don't see it as being a very insightful mission, either.  The visible spectrum photographs produced would be pictures through what seems like an infinte layer of colored fog, with little to no depth perception.  We could possibly learn more about the atmosphere through lower or higher frequency photos, (non-visible electromagnetic waves) but I highly doubt the information gained would be worth the time, effort, supplies, and work involved in planning and going through with it.

Answer 8

Technically yes. But before I explain let's explore what you mean by a "gaseous" planet. I don't believe it is entirely possible for a planet to be gaseous to the "core". If it was, it probably wouldn't maintain its shape and be called a planet. All gaseous planets have a solid or molten core with sufficient gravity to hold the gases around it. So technically, one could drop through the gaseous layer and land on the solid core underneath. Practically though, gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn have extremely high pressures near the surface of the core to the point that most spacecraft would be crushed to pieces before reaching the surface.

It is possible however to "land" on the cloud tops. With adequate information as to the temperature, density, composition, wind speed, and other properties of the gas surrounding the planet, it is possible to design a craft that would simply float in the gas layer (clouds). Such a craft could conduct all the necessary tests that would be needed to characterize the planet.