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Galileo completes kamikaze plunge into Jupiter

September 22, 2003

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Artist's impression of Galileo approaching Jupiter. Image: NASA/JPL

Pasadena, California: NASA's ageing Galileo spacecraft concluded its 14-year exploration of Jupiter and its moons today with a streaking suicide plunge into the planet's turbulent atmosphere.

The spacecraft passed into the shadow of the solar system's largest planet and several minutes later entered its atmosphere at 1957 GMT (0557 AEST Monday). The unmanned spacecraft, travelling at nearly 173,770 kph, was torn apart and vaporised by the heat and friction of its fall through the clouds.

The last word from the spacecraft, including some final scientific measurements, was to arrive on Earth 52 minutes later.

Hundreds of scientists and engineers and their families at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory counted down the last seconds before the spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere.

"We haven't lost a spacecraft, we've gained a new stepping stone in exploration," said Torrence Johnson, the mission's project scientist.

Rosaly Lopes, another scientist on the mission, called Galileo's plunge "a spectacular end to a spectacular mission".

"Personally, I am a little sad. I had the time of my life on Galileo and I'm a little sad to say goodbye to an old friend," Lopes added.

Despite the glitches that plagued Galileo since its 1989 launch aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, it was one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's most fruitful missions, at a cost of $US1.5 billion ($A2.26 billion).

During its thrice-extended mission, Galileo discovered the first moon of an asteroid, witnessed the impact of a comet into Jupiter and provided firm evidence of salty oceans on three of the planet's moons. It returned more than 14,000 images.

"It had more surprises, better stuff waiting to be discovered, than we ever could have imagined. Jupiter and its moons came through," said Andy Ingersol, a Jupiter scientist at the California Institute of Technology.

NASA opted to crash the 1,350-kilogram spacecraft into Jupiter to eliminate the possibility it could smack into Europa, one of Jupiter's watery moons, and contaminate it with any microbes on board.

Galileo had nearly depleted the onboard store of fuel that NASA used to steer it during its 35 orbits of Jupiter.

Galileo is the first planetary spacecraft NASA has intentionally destroyed since it steered the Lunar Prospector into the earth's moon in 1999.

It is not the first to dive into Jupiter: A probe released by the spacecraft did so in 1995, collecting data about the planet's atmosphere for about an hour before it was destroyed.

NASA intends to return to Jupiter in a decade with another unmanned spacecraft called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter.



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