Galileo on crash course
2002-02-22 12:52
Hamburg - After the most successful interplanetary research mission in
history, the German-American space craft Galileo has now been put
on course for a crash landing with the planet it has been studying
for more than half a decade: Jupiter.
Next November, the "miracle space probe" will pass by Jupiter
more closely than it ever has in its previous 33 fly-bys, and then
almost a year later, it will, as planned, disappear into the
planet's atmosphere.
That event will close the logbook on a mission which, despite
the early loss of the main antenna, provided for a whole series of
"firsts" in space exploration and ushered in a new era of planetary
research.
As with so many things with this probe, even the way it got
started on its journey was unusual.
Brought aloft on October 18, 1989, by the US space shuttle
"Atlantis", the Galileo was the first to be sent into the interior
of our solar system in order to use the gravitational fields of
Venus and the Earth to send it, slingshot-style, soaring towards
Jupiter.
The darkest chapter came on April 11, 1991, when the main
antenna, which had been folded up for protection against the heat
as Galileo passed by the sun, failed to properly unfold again.
Months of attempts to open the antenna up proved to be futile.
It still appears to be something of a miracle that, with the
help of a small auxiliary antenna, 70 per cent of Galileo's
research programme could still be carried out.
After an odyssey of several years the probe, with its propulsion
system built by the former German aerospace company MBB, achieved
its orbit around Jupiter in December 1995. Before that, Galileo
succeeded in training its eye on the "Gaspra" asteroid and in
discovering a moon in Jupiter's system.
Astronomers say a pioneering feat was the first documented
collision of objects in our solar system: in July 1994, Galileo
witnessed the crash of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet onto Jupiter.
Initially, Galileo's mission to study Jupiter and its moons was
to have lasted until 1997. But it was extended three times. In this
period, the probe absorbed three and one-half times the amount of
dangerous radiation than its builders had conceived.
Galileo's arrival at Jupiter was accompanied by a number of
highlights, including the dropping of a smaller capsule into the
thick atmosphere of a planet with 318 times the mass of the earth,
providing new scientific data.
- Sapa-DPA
- SAPA