Word: galileo
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...scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (J.P.L.) in Pasadena, California, where the Galileo probe was largely designed and built, the moment of highest drama during the Dec. 7 Jupiter encounter will occur at 3:04 p.m. (P.S.T.). At that instant, a signal that will have been sent from the spacecraft 52 minutes earlier will arrive at J.P.L., having traveled 600 million miles at the speed of light. "A positive signal means the probe has survived the most difficult entry ever and is transmitting to Galileo," explains William O'Neil, the Galileo project manager. "That pretty much says...
After storing the probe's transmitted data in its tape recorder, Galileo will begin its tour of the Jovian system. In a route that will take it into 11 far-ranging orbits during the next 23 months, it will swoop as close as 160 miles above three of Jupiter's four major moons, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, flying by each of them several times. On these passes--hundreds of times closer than those achieved by Voyagers 1 and 2 in 1979--it will shoot pictures and, with remote sensing instruments, analyze the chemical composition of the moons. In the course...
...Galileo's encounter with Jupiter will culminate nearly two decades of work, planning, disappointment, elation and frustration for thousands of scientists and technicians at J.P.L. and at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, which oversees the probe. "It's been a long, hard fight, both technically and politically," says James Van Allen, the University of Iowa physicist best known for his 1958 discovery of the radiation belts that girdle Earth. Van Allen, who likens the story of the Galileo mission to The Perils of Pauline, ought to know. He headed the scientific study group that first recommended...
NASA's original plan was to launch Galileo from the shuttle in 1982 on a direct, two-year flight to Jupiter. But disputes over the type of rocket most appropriate for the launch delayed the mission for four years. Then, after agreement was reached on the liquid-hydrogen-fueled Centaur rocket, the 1986 Challenger disaster not only shut down the shuttle program for nearly three years but also heightened awareness that the Centaur was too risky for a manned craft--in Van Allen's words, "like carrying a hydrogen bomb, except it's more likely...
...opting for a safer, solid-fuel rocket had its drawbacks too; a rocket of this type small enough to fit into the shuttle's cargo bay would not yield enough power to thrust Galileo into a direct flight to Jupiter. "It took the project a while to invent a new way for Galileo to get to Jupiter," says J.P.L. director Edward Stone, "but there was a sense of 'It can be done...