Rings of Jupiter Rings of Jupiter The planet Jupiter has a system of rings known as the rings of Jupiter or the Jovian ring system. It was the third ring system to be discovered in the Solar System, after those of Saturn and Uranus. It was first observed in 1979 by the "Voyager 1" space probe and thoroughly investigated in the 1990s by the "Galileo" orbiter. It has also been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and from Earth for several years. Ground-based observations of the rings require the largest available telescopes. The Jovian ring system is faint and consists mainly of dust.
Exploration of Jupiter is also searching for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. "Juno" also studies Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h. ESA's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) has been selected as part of ESA's Cosmic Vision science program. It is expected to launch in 2022 and, after a series of flybys in the inner Solar System, arrive in 2030. In 2012, the European Space Agency's selected the "JUpiter ICy moon Explorer" (JUICE) as