| Galileo at JPL Open House |
| This is the Galileo model that was on display at the JPL open house on May 2001. According to the press release, it is the last time it will be on display at JPL. If anybody out there knows the fate of this model or any of its history, let me know and I will update this site. After a 14 year journey that was full of discovery and drama, Galileo was destroyed after entering the atmosphere of Jupiter on September 21, 2003. Galileo was nearly out of maneuvering fuel and had far exceeded expectations.. In order to protect possible life on the satellites of Jupiter, Galileo was purposefully steered into Jupiter. Check out the real Galileo website HERE. |
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| Note the undeployed antenna. (umbrella looking thing above black disk) The main antenna never did deploy and limited the transfer of data to Earth drastically. Imagine surfing the net with a 2400 baud modem today because your DSL connection is down. That is similar to what they faced. Compression of data and the onboard tape backup work together to return all Galileo sees and hears. |
| Science instruments mounted on the magnetometer boom. This boom was 11 meters long. The circular gold instrument is a dust detector. Click for picture of Scan Platform. Click for picture of dust detector |
| The spacecraft is covered in black material for heating and cooling purposes. The black disks are sunshields used to protect the antenna and other instruments from the sun during Galileo's flyby of Venus. |