Galileo Project Launch: October 1989 Arrive: December 1995
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Transcript of Galileo Project Launch: October 1989 Arrive: December 1995
Galileo Project Launch: October 1989 Arrive: December 1995
Crashes into Jupiter: September 21, 2003 The Galileo spacecraft and
its Inertial Upper Stage booster rocket were deployed from the
space shuttle Atlantis October 18, 1989. Shortly thereafter, the
booster rocket fired and separated, sending Galileo on its six-year
journey to the planet Jupiter. Upon its arrival at Jupiter in
December 1995, Galileo released a probe into the atmosphere that
gathered data on the composition of the planet's clouds. The
orbiter relayed probe information back to Earth andsurveyed and
photographed Jupiter and some of its major satellites. Galileo's
mission was to study Jupiter and its moons in more detail than any
previous spacecraft.
The spacecraft is named in honor of the first modern astronomer ---
Galileo Galilei. He made the first observations of the heavens
using a telescope in 1610. This picture of Antarctica is a mosaic
of 40 images obtained by the Galileo spacecraft's camera using the
red, green, and violet filters. When the images were taken several
hours after Galileo's first Earth flyby on December 8, 1990, the
spacecraft was about 200,000 kilometers (124,000 miles) from Earth.
View of Australia from Galileo Eight days after its second
encounter with the Earth, the Galileo spacecraft was able to look
back and capture this remarkable view of the Moon in orbit about
the Earth, taken from a distance of about 6.2 million kilometers
(3.9 million miles), on December 16, 1992. These four images of the
Moon are from data acquired by the Galileo spacecraft's
Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer during Galileo's December 1992
Earth/Moon flyby. This is the orbital tour that Galileo took while
at Jupiter
This is the orbital tour that Galileo took while at Jupiter This is
an image of Jupiters atmosphere imaged by Galileo
This is an image of Jupiters atmosphere imaged by Galileo.Each
pixel is 35.7 km squared. The great red spot on Jupiter is a huge
storm made visible by variations in the composition of the cloud
particles. The Red Spot is not unique, but is simply the largest of
a class of long-lived vortices, some of which are visible in the
lower part of the image. In 1994, Galileo was perfectly positioned
to watch the fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crash into
Jupiter. Nasa/jpl A portion of a chain of impact craters on
Jupiter's moon Callisto is seen in this image taken by the Galileo
spacecraft on November 4, This crater chain on Callisto is believed
to result from the impact of a split object, similar to the
fragments of Comet Shoemaker- Levy 9 which smashed into Jupiter's
atmosphere in July of 1994. Nasa/jpl The cone-shaped Galileo probe
entered the atmosphere of Jupiter on Dec. 7, 1995, at a speed of
over 106,000 mph and survived deceleration forces of 228 times
Earth's gravity. After deploying a parachute, it relayed data to
the Galileo orbiter spacecraft overhead for 57 minutes. It appeared
that Jupiter's atmosphere is drier than thought
It appeared that Jupiter's atmosphere is drier than thought.
Measurements from the probe showed few clouds, and lightning only
in the distance. It was only later that it was discovered that the
probe had entered an area called a "hot spot." It appeared that
Jupiter's atmosphere was drier than thought
It appeared that Jupiter's atmosphere was drier than thought.
Measurements from the probe showed few clouds, and lightning only
in the distance. It was only later that it was discovered that the
probe had entered an area called a "hot spot." Towards the end of
the descent, the probe measured winds of 450 miles per hour -
stronger than anything on Earth. The probe was finally melted and
vaporized by the intense heat of the atmosphere. Whats in store for
Galileo?
Galileo will crash into Jupiter on September 21, 2003, ending its
14 year mission. Where is Galileo now? In the Future The Jupiter
Icy Moons Orbiter is an ambitious proposed mission to orbit three
planet-sized moons of Jupiter -- Callisto, Ganymede and Europa --
which may harbor vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The
mission would launch in 2012 or later. The Jupiter Icy Moons
Mission could shed light on Europa, a mysterious moon of
Jupiter.