Galileo to be purposely dived into Jupiter

majormattmajormatt
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
The end of its life is almost here, $1.4B of tax dollars going into the gassy deep.



The computer system is similiar to the Apple ][



http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/0...ash/index.html

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Yeah I heard about this on the radio...apparently it can get zapped pretty badly from electrical charges that it has to shut itself down and reboot sometimes and the radiation is getting to it. Or something like that. They are setting it not to shut off no matter what and to keep sending data to the earth for as long as possible as it plummets. Very interesting
  • Reply 2 of 8
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Just an interesting tidbit: My Grandpa worked on the Galileo probe and supervised it's launch. There is a streak of genus somewhere in my family.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    aquafireaquafire Posts: 2,758member
    What a super trooper..

    all that info with less than a light bulb's energy requirement...



    I just wish the probe could be retired into a parking orbit of some sort....so that our future spacearcheologists could retrive it...and learn about primitive life on ERRF
  • Reply 4 of 8
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Aquafire: That was an option, but Jupiter's gravity is hard to predict along with all the planets and other anomalies. The problem is if the probe crashed into one of the moons that "may" support life, it might contaminate it. It was just too great of a risk.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Galileo is being "euthanized" (to kill any terrestrial bacteria stowaways that might survive vacuum, >400 degree temperature extremes, and dives through Jupiter's hard radiation influence... some might).



    Curiously, it was "excommunicated" first... it's been on low gain antenna since a failure of it's primary dish very early in the mission.



    Sadly, the probe's cameras have been offline for several orbits, due to radiation on previous passes of IO, so we won't get pictures of it's final dive.



    always with the historical precedents, those pattern watching NASA folk.



    there's a webcast scheduled from Mission Control... click pic for link



  • Reply 6 of 8
    chinneychinney Posts: 1,019member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by curiousuburb

    Galileo is being "euthanized" (to kill any terrestrial bacteria stowaways that might survive vacuum, >400 degree temperature extremes, and dives through Jupiter's hard radiation influence... some might).



    A recent article that I read explained that the reason for the planned crash into Jupiter is that to allow the dying Galileo to continue to pass near the moons of Jupiter - and potentially crash into one of the moons - could, if any microorganism were present, affect any life on those moons or even be the origin of new life there. This is further to the discovery, suggested by Galileo itself, of water on at least one of the moons. The risk of a microorganism actually doing this on one of the moons is low, but present. Vapourizing Galileo in the dense and hot atmosphere of Jupiter itself does not carry risks of this nature.



    For Trekkies, it is interesting to see that NASA is following the Prime Directive.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    I'm surprised NASA didn't screw up and successfully land the damn thing on a floating chunk of ice or something.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Hey now...
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