The end is near for one of our most successful spacecraft

[Noah]

As many of you may know, Sept. 21 the Galileo spacecraft's mission will be terminated when it crashes into Jupiter to prevent running out of fuel and crashing in to Europa, possibly contaminating any possible lifeforms in its ocean.

Since it arrived at Jupiter in Dec. 1995, it has overcome huge obstacles, including its main antenna not opening. But they have been able to use the secondary antenna, and while much slower transmit times, much useful data was collected. Also, it has withstood many times the radiation that it was built to take.

This is the main site for the Galileo mission, with information to keep you busy for a while
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/mission/mission.html

Noah

[Tormod]

Thanks Noah!

To all - we have had lots of stories about Galileo in the past - search for Galileo in our search field to find it. Of special interest is the Jupiter Flyby where both Galileo and Cassini (which is headed for Saturn) were working to image and emasure Jupiter. Great stuff.

Tormod

[Tormod]

And it is also interesting to remember that Galileo was supposed to last until 1997...so lasting until 2003 it is one of NASA's really big success missions!

Tormod