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Galileo's Final Blaze of Glory

Posted by timothy on from the what-a-way-to-go dept.

EccentricAnomaly writes: "CNN reports that the Galileo spacecraft is about to perform its last flyby of Io. Galileo will skim a mere 100 km above Io to enter a trajectory that crashes into Jupiter in 2003. This is to avoid the spacecraft running out of fuel and accidentally crashing into Europa which might contaminate it with any bacteria spores on Galileo. This is a real concern - Apollo 12 found bacteria on Surveyor 3 that survived two and a half years on the moon."

3 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Question! by Dimwit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I don't understand from this theory is how bacteria can survive the reentry pressure and especially heat that is generated! Or does the inside of a big enough asteroid stay cool? I wouldn't think so but does anybody have a definitive answer?

    Actually, you don't need to worry about heat. The massive amount of heat generated by the shuttle reentry and other such things has to reasons:

    1) The shuttle is moving very, very fast relative to the atmosphere

    2) The shuttle has a large ablative surface area

    Assuming an assload of spores hits the Earth, a lot of them will be burned up (wrong trajectory, etc), but plenty of them will survive and simple drift down.

    --
    ...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
  2. Re:Think BIG by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More importantly, there are plans being drawn up to send probes to Europa to look for eveidence of life, as it's one of the most likely candidates in the solar system.

    If there is any bacteria on the galileo probe, then crashing it on Europa risks contaminating any samples that we do take, thus giving false positives. Not cool given the amount of time, effort and money that will go into such a mission. (Don't even get me started on what a blow it would be for science...)

    Cheers,

    Tim

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  3. My father grew up with one of the project managers by jmichaelg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In 1919, my father and Roy Adams, were 10 years old. My grandmother gave my father a small lathe which he and Roy used to fabricate a small, air-powered, motor. The motor is amazing, especially given that it was designed and built by two 10 year olds.

    Roy's parents were poor so he didn't get to go college. However, he was so self-evidently bright, it didn't matter. JPL eventually hired him and he ended his career as a project manager on the Galileo. My father always got a kick out of the fact that Roy, with his high school diploma, had a raft of rocket science Ph.D.'s reporting to him.

    The little air-powered motor still works. It, like the Galileo, way outlived its intended design life. Rest In Peace Roy, you did good.