How fast was the Probe going when it entered Jupiters atmosphere?
170,700 kilometers per hour, or 47 kilometers per second. That’s the highest impact speed of any man-made object ever. As the Probe was pulled in by Jupiter’s strong gravity, an enormous release of energy occurred as the spacecraft was slowed from 170,700 km/hour to 430 km/hour in four minutes, hence the 15,500 degree C incandescent plasma envelope generated ahead of the Probe, which was brighter than the Sun’s surface. It had no rocket engines for course corrections. The Probe needed to enter Jupiter’s atmosphere at an angle of 8.3 degrees to the horizontal. A 1.5 degree shallower angle would have caused it to skip off back into space; a 1.5 degree steeper angle would have overheated the spacecraft and destroyed it.
