Richard Fidler

Because it's got to go past, what, Mars?

That's not a hop, skip and a jump.

That's quite a long way.

Does it need more than that to travel, the solar arrays to travel that vast distance?

Really?

So you've shot it out.

Yeah.

It's going to do a slingshot orbit around Mars.

Not quite orbit.

No, but I can picture it, though.

So you do this one loop.

And you pick up a huge amount of speed from that and you can do this bigger loop that touches around the Earth's gravitational field.

And then off to Jupiter.

Okay.

What's the biggest engineering challenge in building a spacecraft that can get near that great big ugly behemoth?

that is Jupiter.

When I say ugly, I mean it really is beautiful, but I'm talking about the way it treats its neighbours and the like.

What does it mean?

What are the big challenges in building a spacecraft that can actually exist and function anywhere near Jupiter?

Well, I was just thinking that as you were saying that, you know, if I put a powerful magnet near my laptop, which is right next to me, it'll just blitz, it'll wipe it out.