Bye bye, Galileo…

by Diane

“The solar system’s greatest explorer will perish in a kamikaze dive into the solar system’s biggest planet late tomorrow. It detected a salt water ocean under the ice of Europa…and an unexpected magnetic field around the largest [of Jupiter’s satellites], Ganymede. The mission was meant to last a couple of years. Altogether, Galileo spent 14 years away from Earth. It was designed to survive only so much of the fierce radiation from Jupiter before it failed: it absorbed four times the planned amount and kept on sending photographs and data back to mission control at Pasadena, California.

“…It sped past Io as a giant fountain of fire erupted from its volcanic surface, and it detected liquid salt water on Ganymede and Callisto. And it did all this with a temperamental tape recorder, a main communications antenna that failed to deploy, an onboard computer of the kind used to play Pac-man games, and the spare power to light up a 60 watt bulb.”

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