The Galileo spacecraft was an unmanned probe sent to study Jupiter and its moons. It was launched in 1989 and made several flybys before arriving at Jupiter in 1995. Galileo orbited Jupiter, made close flybys of its moons, and sent the first probe into its atmosphere. It discovered the first lunar asteroid and strongly suggested the existence of a saltwater ocean on Europa. After 14 years of service, Galileo was put into orbit to prevent contamination of nearby moons.
The Galileo spacecraft, also known as the Galileo orbiter, was an unmanned space probe sent to study Jupiter and its moons. Galileo is named after Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer and Renaissance man who used one of the first telescopes to observe the moons orbiting Jupiter. A NASA mission, Galileo was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Galileo was powered by two radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which powered the spacecraft through the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.
Galileo was launched on October 18, 1989 as a payload on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It made several gravitational flybys of Venus and Earth before launching itself in the direction of Jupiter. In 1993 he discovered the first lunar asteroid, Dactyl, orbiting the asteroid Ida. Planetary scientists had suspected the existence of asteroid moons before this one, but had never observed any.
Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995. It was the first aircraft to orbit Jupiter instead of just performing a flyby, which allowed it to make much more detailed and numerous observations, including images. The primary mission was a two-year study of Jupiter, which was later extended by six years. For most of the duration of the mission, Galileo orbited Jupiter in elongated ellipses. Near the end, it made close flybys of the moons Io and Europa, passing within 180 km (112 mi) of Io on October 15, 2001, as close to a spacecraft as possible without landing from a planetary body. He has observed the lava flows on Io up close.
Galileo’s observations have led scientists to strongly suspect that a saltwater ocean lies beneath Europa’s surface. However, subsequent missions would need to be sent to confirm this.
Galileo sent the first probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The Galileo probe’s descent module weighed 339 kg and was the size of a small refrigerator, with a diameter of 1.3 meters. Half of its mass was its heat shield. It sent data for about 58 minutes after entering Jupiter’s atmosphere before succumbing to the immense pressure and being squeezed like a beer can, similar to the Venera lander that had visited Venus’ surface twenty years earlier.
On September 21, 2003, after 14 years of service, Galileo was put into orbit at a speed of almost 50 kilometers per second to prevent it from contaminating nearby moons with terrestrial bacteria. It was the second space probe to meet its fate in the depths of a gas giant, after the probe it sent before it.
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