NASA to Crash Galileo Probe Into Jupiter
Sunday, September 14, 2003
(3:52 PM ET)
By Andrew Bridges
Associated Press Writer
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.
PIA00600: Family Portrait of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and the Galilean Satellites
Image Credit: JPL & NASA’s Planetary Photojournal
PASADENA, Calif. -- AP
NASA plans to crash its $1.5 billion Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter next weekend to make sure it doesn't accidentally contaminate the planet's ice-covered moon Europa with bacteria from Earth.
After Galileo's orbit carries it behind Jupiter at 12:49 p.m. PDT Sunday, the aging probe will plunge into the planet's stormy atmosphere at a speed of nearly 108,000 mph.
The heat generated as it streaks through the atmosphere will vaporize the nearly 3,000-pound Galileo and any microbes that may have been stowaways on the spacecraft 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.
(More: Netscape Network News)
2003 © The Associated Press.
On the Net:
* Galileo Mission at jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/
* Planetary Protection agt http://planpro.jpl.nasa.gov
Dan
NASA to Crash Galileo Probe Into Jupiter . . .