GALILEO SPACECRAFT PASTS EARTH FOR THE FIRST TIME

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of Joseph de Ca'th Lon, one of her closest friends. They have been talking about Galileo, the American robotic space probe that flew past Earth for the first time on a day like today in 1992.

Galileo was an American robotic space probe that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as the asteroids Gaspra and Ida. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and an entry probe. It was delivered into Earth orbit on October 18, 1989, by Space Shuttle Atlantis, during STS-34.

Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory built the Galileo spacecraft and managed the Galileo program for NASA. West Germany's Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm supplied the propulsion module.

NASA's Ames Research Center managed the atmospheric probe, which was built by Hughes Aircraft Company. At launch, the orbiter and probe together had a mass of 2,562 kg and stood 6.15 m tall.

Spacecraft are normally stabilized either by spinning around a fixed axis or by maintaining a fixed orientation with reference to the Sun and a star. Galileo did both. One section of the spacecraft rotated at 3 revolutions per minute, keeping Galileo stable and holding six instruments that gathered data from many different directions, including the fields and particles instruments.

More information: NASA

Galileo was intentionally destroyed in Jupiter's atmosphere on September 21, 2003. The next orbiter to be sent to Jupiter was Juno, which arrived on July 5, 2016.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, with more than twice the mass of all the other planets combined. Consideration of sending a probe to Jupiter began as early as 1959.

NASA's Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) for Outer Solar System Missions considered the requirements for Jupiter orbiters and atmospheric probes. It noted that the technology to build a heat shield for an atmospheric probe did not yet exist, and facilities to test one under the conditions found on Jupiter would not be available until 1980.

NASA management designated the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as the lead center for the Jupiter Orbiter Probe (JOP) project. The JOP would be the fifth spacecraft to visit Jupiter, but the first to orbit it, and the probe would be the first to enter its atmosphere.

On December 19, 1985, it departed the JPL in Pasadena, California, on the first leg of its journey, a road trip to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the May launch date could not be met.

The mission was re-scheduled October 12, 1989. The Galileo spacecraft would be launched by the STS-34 mission in the Space Shuttle Atlantis. As the launch date of Galileo neared, anti-nuclear groups, concerned over what they perceived as an unacceptable risk to the public's safety from the plutonium in the Galileo's radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) and General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) modules, sought a court injunction prohibiting Galileo's launch. RTGs were necessary for deep space probes because they had to fly distances from the Sun that made the use of solar energy impractical.

More information: NASA

 The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

Carl Sandburg