As most of you may know, the Galileo spacecraft that has been orbiting Jupiter since December, 1995 was commanded to impact Jupiter this past Sunday. Although it didn't find any aliens for the SETI project (now it's on-topic 😉), Galileo made many wonderful, sometimes startling, discoveries regarding the Jovian system.
Galileo was actually begun in 1978, was launched on the Shuttle Atlantis in 1989 and used the gravitational pull of the planets in the solar system to provide the necessary propulsion to reach Jupiter. Despite never being able to use it's high-gain antenna, Galileo transmitted over 30 gigabytes of data to Earth during its mission. Beginning in 1991 after they determined that the high-gain antenna was not going to deploy, NASA engineers had to rewrite and upload completely new flight software, rewrite ground software, plus re-program and enhance the Deep Space Network in order to allow Galileo to complete its mission using only the low-gain antenna. (Amazing!)
NASA/JPL has released a cool four minute video about Galileo's legacy. Here's the link:
Real Player version
or if you prefer:
QuickTime version
I know I received many, many hours of enjoyment from following this mission over the internet. It's sad to see it come to an end.
Goodbye, Galileo. 🙁
Galileo was actually begun in 1978, was launched on the Shuttle Atlantis in 1989 and used the gravitational pull of the planets in the solar system to provide the necessary propulsion to reach Jupiter. Despite never being able to use it's high-gain antenna, Galileo transmitted over 30 gigabytes of data to Earth during its mission. Beginning in 1991 after they determined that the high-gain antenna was not going to deploy, NASA engineers had to rewrite and upload completely new flight software, rewrite ground software, plus re-program and enhance the Deep Space Network in order to allow Galileo to complete its mission using only the low-gain antenna. (Amazing!)
NASA/JPL has released a cool four minute video about Galileo's legacy. Here's the link:
Real Player version
or if you prefer:
QuickTime version
I know I received many, many hours of enjoyment from following this mission over the internet. It's sad to see it come to an end.
Goodbye, Galileo. 🙁
