The usual metric for whether a planet is habitable or not is to ascertain whether liquid water could exist on its surface. Most worlds will either be too cold, too hot or of a type (like Jupiter) that may have no solid surface and be swaddled in noxious gases.

Seth Shostak

Just because Pluto or comets aren't as big as Jupiter doesn't mean they are not scientifically important - indeed, just the reverse is often true. Sometimes, great things come in small packages.

Alan Stern

When we first sent missions to Jupiter, no one expected to find moons that would have active volcanoes. And I could go down a long list of how often I've been surprised by the richness of nature.

Alan Stern

The first mission to Mars did not expect to find craters and river valleys, and yet they did. The first mission to Jupiter didn't expect to find ocean worlds and volcano worlds, but they did.

Alan Stern

Mars is much closer to the characteristics of Earth. It has a fall, winter, summer and spring. North Pole, South Pole, mountains and lots of ice. No one is going to live on Venus; no one is going to live on Jupiter.

Buzz Aldrin

The first real Cassini image that brought tears to my eyes was an image of Jupiter. I didn't expect it to look so detailed.

Carolyn Porco

Every type of ring behavior we have seen around Jupiter, Uranus, or Neptune can be found in orbit around Saturn. And Saturn's ring system offers the greatest promise of understanding processes in operation within all disk systems, not just those found around planets.

Carolyn Porco

If you were to stand on an asteroid in the main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter in our solar system, you might be able to see one or two asteroids in the sky, but they would be very far away and very, very small. So you wouldn't have this 'dodging through tons of rocks' business you get in the movies.

Carrie Nugent

We must believe then, that as from hence we see Saturn and Jupiter; if we were in either of the Two, we should discover a great many Worlds which we perceive not; and that the Universe extends so in infinitum.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists.

Fred Thompson

Jupiter is so big and its gravitational pull so strong that man would find it difficult to move about on the surface. The answer is to whittle it down to proper size with terrajets and nuclear power, using the debris to increase the size of Jupiter's moons so they, too, can be colonized.

Fritz Zwicky

Jupiter, Pluto, pick a planet: we can go there. I just got a bit more work to do in the music industry, and we're going to space, baby.

Future

When I first heard that a comet was going to hit Jupiter, my reaction was, 'Eh. So what? Jupiter's huge. Comets are small. And so when I saw the first impact site and it was huge and dark, I was flabbergasted.

Heidi Hammel

We don't use Hubble to stare at Jupiter unless there's a special event or some special reason.

Heidi Hammel

As you go further from the sun, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are each colder in their upper atmosphere. But when you get to Neptune, it's just as warm as Uranus.

Heidi Hammel

Weather forecast for Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt: cloudy with a chance of ammonia.

Heidi Hammel

I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us.

Imogen Cunningham

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island.

Lactantius

It is possible that Mount Olympus may have supplied the poets with the hint for saying that Jupiter obtained the kingdom of heaven, because Olympus is the common name both of the mountain and of heaven.

Lactantius

I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.

Laura Dern