Galileo Spacecraft

After a hellish week with the apparently doomed Mars Observer probe, NASA finally got some good news Saturday as the handicapped Galileo spacecraft explored asteroid Ida on its way to Jupiter. "We feel wonderful and greatly relieved," said Bill O'Neil, project manager of the $1.4-billion Galileo mission run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "I really feel good having this past us and having a big plus mark today following not-so-good news earlier in the week."

With a jazz band playing in the background and more than a thousand glasses raised, Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers said goodbye to one of their own Sunday, toasting the veteran spacecraft Galileo as it performed a dramatic suicide plunge into the giant planet Jupiter. With Galileo's gas tank empty after a 14-year space mission, NASA officials decided to destroy the spacecraft to prevent it from accidentally crashing into and contaminating any of Jupiter's moons. The $1.

The Galileo spacecraft made history Tuesday when it became the first spacecraft to encounter an asteroid, a cold chunk of rock and metal left over from the formation of the solar system. Galileo passed within 1,000 miles of Gaspra, snapping pictures as it sailed toward the asteroid at a relative velocity of 17,900 m.p.h., but it will be a year before scientists know whether their photos are any good.

NASA engineers normally do everything they can to keep spacecraft up and running. On Sunday, they will intentionally send one of their most successful veteran explorers crashing into Jupiter's atmosphere in a dramatic suicide plunge. The aging Galileo spacecraft will plummet into Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere at speeds reaching 108,000 mph, NASA officials said at a briefing Wednesday to detail the hardy spacecraft's impending demise. Death will be swift. "Frictional forces will tear it apart.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew by Jupiter's largest moon for the fourth and final time Wednesday, Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists said. The closest approach to Ganymede took place at 8:56 a.m. as the craft traveled 994 miles above the moon at a speed of more than 19,000 mph. Although this will be Galileo's last encounter with Ganymede, the spacecraft will fly by two other Jovian moons--Callisto and Europa--before its primary mission ends in December.

After taking a brief look at Venus, the Galileo spacecraft is speeding toward a close encounter with Earth Dec. 8 on its long journey to Jupiter and it is expected to hit its desired course almost on the button, scientists reported Thursday.

One key scientist has died and several others have retired while waiting for the often-delayed Galileo spacecraft to blast off for Jupiter, but success moved a little closer last week when a probe that will dash through the Jovian atmosphere was packaged for a trip across town. It was a small step perhaps. But for the men and women who have grown gray and weary while waiting for their mission to get off the ground, any progress is to be cherished.

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena were all ears Saturday as the Galileo spacecraft began to send back news of its encounter with Jupiter almost a full day earlier than planned. "Things were going so well we decided to go ahead and start downloading," said Galileo systems manager Jim Marr. The news from the probe--now vaporized in the giant planet's high-pressure atmosphere--is coming down to Earth as so much computer babble.

On its convoluted journey to Jupiter, the Galileo spacecraft swung by Earth on Saturday, giving scientists the first glimpse of what it might be like to be aboard an alien spacecraft flying through the solar system. At 12:35 p.m., only four-tenths of a second behind schedule and a mere five miles off course, the $1.5-billion nuclear-powered spacecraft flew flawlessly less than 600 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. "It was virtually perfect," said William J.

After almost 20 years of nail-biting, a half-dozen pale Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists finally realized their dream Thursday: Their intrepid Galileo spacecraft successfully delivered its long-awaited one-two punch to Jupiter, jabbing the giant planet's midsection with a precisely parachuted probe and then powering its mother ship into Jovian orbit. At precisely 3:10 p.m.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft has begun transmitting data again after strong radiation near Jupiter had left its tape recorder inoperable for weeks. Galileo's flight team traced the problem to a light-emitting diode and completed a long-distance repair job. "We hope this will be the best data set that's ever been collected about the inner region of Jupiter's magnetic environment," said Dr. Torrence Johnson, Galileo project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

After receiving heavy doses of electronics-crippling radiation while flying past Jupiter's small inner moon Amalthea on Nov. 5, the Galileo spacecraft appears to be functioning again. The radiation levels forced the orbiter into safe, standby mode for a week. But a Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight team is still trying to determine why a tape recorder used for storing data has not resumed functioning.

NASA's workhorse spacecraft Galileo made a final flyby of Jupiter's moon Amalthea in what is expected to mark the end of the science-gathering portion of its 13-year mission. NASA officials said Galileo flew within 99 miles of Amalthea, a brilliant red, egg-shaped moon, then swung closer to Jupiter than it ever has before. The team plans to crash the probe into Jupiter in September.

A spacecraft that was supposed to die a natural death in 1997 is now being joined near Jupiter by a newer craft, unexpectedly giving scientists the chance to "double team" the giant gas planet, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said Saturday.

New evidence from a fly-by of Jupiter's moon Europa has yielded the most compelling evidence yet that a vast ocean of water lies beneath the moon's ice-covered surface, UCLA researchers report today. Using data from the Galileo space probe, the scientists detected a strong magnetic field under the moon's surface, which they said can be accounted for only by the presence of salt water.

The first close-up pictures of three small inner moons of Jupiter have been received from the Galileo spacecraft, which took them during a risky trip through the planet's lethal radiation belts in January. Previous pictures of Thebe, Amalthea and Metis had shown only very large features, while the new images show details as small as 1.2 miles across. The new images show 25-mile-wide craters on both Thebe and Amalthea and a 31-mile-long bright streak on Amalthea.

After receiving heavy doses of electronics-crippling radiation while flying past Jupiter's small inner moon Amalthea on Nov. 5, the Galileo spacecraft appears to be functioning again. The radiation levels forced the orbiter into safe, standby mode for a week. But a Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight team is still trying to determine why a tape recorder used for storing data has not resumed functioning.

The first close-up pictures of three small inner moons of Jupiter have been received from the Galileo spacecraft, which took them during a risky trip through the planet's lethal radiation belts in January. Previous pictures of Thebe, Amalthea and Metis had shown only very large features, while the new images show details as small as 1.2 miles across. The new images show 25-mile-wide craters on both Thebe and Amalthea and a 31-mile-long bright streak on Amalthea.

NASA's Galileo probe has completed its latest observations of Jupiter's moons without encountering any problems from the giant planet's intense radiation. The spacecraft swung by the frozen world Europa early Monday and proceeded to study three minor moons--Amalthea, Thebe and Metis--before taking distant measurements of the volcanic moon Io on Tuesday. Unlike previous encounters, Galileo's computers did not enter safe mode or reset from the radioactive environment.

Data collected during the Galileo probe's suicide plunge into Jupiter in December 1995 suggest current theories about the gas giant's origin may be wrong. Jupiter is believed to have formed from the solar nebula and from a collection of small bodies called icy planetissimals. But data reported in today's Nature indicate that Jupiter contains two to three times as much of the heavy noble gases argon, krypton and xenon as would be expected if it had formed from the solar nebula.