[Galileo Probe]

Galileo to Jupiter

Description of Galileo

Launched on October 18, 1989.
Galileo has used planetary gravity assists to put itself on a trajectory to Jupiter.
This technique allows the spacecraft to change velocity as it passes close by a planet.
Galileo's six-year path to Jupiter took it past Venus once and Earth twice, with two passes through the asteroid belt that provided flybys of Gaspra and Ida.

The Galileo spacecraft consists of two principal parts: an orbiter and an atmospheric probe. The probe was released from the orbiter 148 days before arrival at Jupiter and entered Jupiter's atmosphere to study the temperature, pressure and composition of the cloud layers and relay its data back to the orbiter.
After completion of the probe mission, the orbiter will perform an orbital mission about Jupiter doing ten close flybys of the Galilean satellites Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, one each on ten of eleven orbits during the 2-year orbital mission. Io, the other Galilean satellite, was visited with a close flyby just prior to the probe entry into Jupiter.
Galileo will also study Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetosphere during each of its orbits around Jupiter. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995.

Each week, from July 15 to December 3 '96,
   ARVAL published a new page of this series.
   It has now been completed.

  1. Launch of Galileo on STS-34 Atlantis
  2. Deployment of Galileo and the IUS
  3. Infrared Image of Low Clouds on Venus
  4. Venus
  5. Images of Earth
  6. Antarctica
  7. South Polar Projection of Earth
  8. Western Hemisphere of Moon
  9. Gaspra Rotation Sequence
  10. Highest-Resolution Image of Gaspra
  11. Central Andes of South America
  12. The Horn of Africa
  13. North Polar Region of Moon
  14. Earth-Moon Conjunction
  15. Ida Rotation Sequence
  16. Asteroid Ida
  17. Ida's Limb
  18. Ida and Dactyl
  19. Highest Resolution Image of Dactyl
  20. Shoemaker-Levy 9: The Last Impact - W

Link to: Solar System Exploration: Galileo Legacy Site (NASA - JPL)

Updated: December 9 '96

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