INDEPTH: GALILEO
The Galileo spacecraft
Justin Thompson, CBC News Online | September 22, 2003
After a 14-year celestial tour, the Galileo spacecraft was steered into Jupiter's atmosphere and destroyed.
It was a dramatic end for a vehicle that travelled a whopping 4,631,778,000 kilometres, taking it past Earth, Venus, Jupiter and five of Jupiter's moons.
And Galileo's swan song was a real-time transmission made as it approached the giant planet on September 21, 2003. The spacecraft incinerated as it travelled through Jupiter's atmosphere at more than 170,000 kilometres an hour.
NASA worried the aging probe would run out of fuel and crash into one of the moons, possibly contaminating it with Earth organisms.
Scientists said they were particularly concerned about protecting the moon Europa because of evidence it has a briny subsurface ocean that once might have harboured life forms.
Named after the Italian scientist who discovered Jupiter's major moons in 1610, Galileo was launched into Earth orbit by Space Shuttle Atlantis in October 1989.
True to its namesake, the spacecraft's primary mission was to explore the planet that entranced Galileo so long before. Indeed Galileo was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and probe its atmosphere. It did 35 laps around Jupiter and made a number of orbits around its largest moons: Europa (11), Callisto (8), Ganymede (8), Io (7) and Amalthea (1).
The Jupiter probe took readings on atmospheric pressure and temperature among other things. Data transmitted from the solar system's largest planet took an hour to reach Earth.
Among the discoveries made by Galileo:
- Evidence from Jupiter's atmosphere suggests the planet may have formed out of the solar nebula
- The existence of ammonia clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere
- Ganymede is the first moon known to have a magnetic field
- Volcanic activity on Io may be 100 times greater than that found on Earth
- Thick ice on the surface of Europa may cover a liquid ocean beneath
- The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 began breaking up in Jupiter's orbit and cannonballed into the planet's surface one year later
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| GALILEO QUICK FACTS: |
Launched: Oct. 18, 1989
Destroyed: Sept. 21, 2003
Distance travelled: 4,631,778,000 km
Price of mission: $1.39 billion
Dimensions: 5.2 m (17 feet) high, 11 m (36 feet) wide
Weight: 2.3 tonnes
Fuel: Plutonium for electricity, monomethyl-hydrazine for navigation
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| CBC STORIES: |
Galileo burns up in Jupiter's atmosphere (Sept. 21, 2003)
Remote repairs salvage final data from Galileo probe (Dec. 18, 2002)
CBC News:Galileo probe flies past Jupiter, ends its mission (Nov. 2, 2002)
Thick ice on Europa chills hunt for life (May 22, 2002)
Evidence for hidden ocean on Jupiter moon (Dec. 18, 2001)
Galileo takes closer look at Io (Oct. 16, 2001)
Galileo's camera on the fritz (May 25, 2001)
Galileo captures Jupiter's moons (April 27, 2000)
Galileo back on track, despite computer problems (Nov. 28, 1999)
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