Galileo (spacecraft)

Galileo spacecraft will end its mission on Jupiter on Sunday

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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1. Animation of Galileo Spacecraft 2. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) 3. Animation of Galileo Spacecraft 4. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) 5. Animation of Galileo Spacecraft 6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) 7. Animation of Galileo Spacecraft 8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) 9. Animation of Galileo Spacecraft STORYLINE: NASA plans to crash its $1.5 billion Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter next weekend to make sure it does not accidentally contaminate the planet's ice-covered moon Europa with bacteria from Earth. After Galileo's orbit carries it behind Jupiter at 1949 GMT Sunday, the aging probe will plunge into the planet's stormy atmosphere at a speed of nearly 108,000 mph (173,770 kph). Its suicide dive comes at the end of its 35th orbit of the planet - far longer than the 11 orbits the spacecraft originally was planned to complete. The heat generated as it streaks through the atmosphere will vaporize the nearly 3,000-pound (1,350-kilogram) Galileo and the untold millions of microbial stowaways lurking since its 1989 launch. The crash will ensure Galileo doesn't hit Europa and spill bacteria onto the ice that caps its enormous oceans. Europa, a planet-sized moon, is widely believed to have the most promising habitat for extraterrestrial life within the solar system. Were Earth bugs to gain a toehold on Europa, perhaps in pools of water warmed by radioactive plutonium the spacecraft uses to generate electricity, they could compromise future attempts to probe the moon for indigenous life. "It seems like a good place where, potentially, you can have life and it also seems like a place where Earth life would find it a nice place to live. So why hit it?" said John Rummel, planetary protection officer for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA typically scrubs its spacecraft clean of microbes to prevent what it calls the "forward contamination" of other places in the solar system. That wasn't done with Galileo, which NASA originally intended to leave in orbit around Jupiter. Years ago, however, the promise of Europa convinced NASA to err on the side of caution and plans were made to destroy Galileo, which now is nearly out of the propellant that would allow it to trim its course. The concern is that the gravitational tug of Jupiter could alter the orbit of the spacecraft and cause it to hit Europa or another moon. The intentional crash will be the first since 1999, when NASA plowed the Lunar Prospector orbiter into the moon. In 1994, NASA crashed the Magellan orbiter into Venus. Satellites routinely crash to Earth, as NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory did in 2000. Recent research has revealed the tenacity of microbial life and its ability to resist extremes of temperature and radiation. Even though Galileo has been buffeted by both, its shielded innards likely harbor viable microbes. "We in our infinite wisdom thought nothing could survive in those harsh environments, but we are learning every day about things that can," said Claudia Alexander, Galileo's seventh and likely last project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The 14-year mission has been among NASA's most successful, despite a litany of glitches. Its focus was to have been Jupiter itself, but the planet's quirky, diverse moons - including Io, the solar system's most volcanically active body - stole the spotlight. NASA hopes to wring some scientific measurements from Galileo before its demise. When the end does come, 1,500 people associated with the mission are expected to gather at the lab to mark the occasion. "It will have some of the flavor of a wake," Alexander said. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/89def1894ac93aed4a2065c39e95fcf6 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork