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 and surveyed and photographed Jupiter and some of its major satellites. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/images/deploy.gif

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 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/mission/journey-prime.html This is the orbital tour that Galileo took while at Jupiter

This is an image of Jupiter’s atmosphere imaged by Galileo This is an image of Jupiter’s 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, 1996. 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.

http://www.xtec.es/recursos/astronom/galileo/jupiter/006smi.jpg

What’s in store for Galileo? Galileo will crash into Jupiter on September 21, 2003, ending its 14 year mission. http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/artwork.html 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. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00502 The Jupiter Icy Moons Mission could shed light on Europa, a mysterious moon of Jupiter.