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Galileo's Final Blaze of Glory
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."
I just wish mankind could be this careful with its native planet.
(mod me as you will...)
But they know Jupiter has an atmosphere which should burn up the probe and destroy anything on it.
A little bit risky, but if your choices are Europa or Jupiter, and you can't avoid hitting anything, you have to go with the main chance.
Sorry, couldn't help myself:
All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Attempt no landings there.
(This should be all caps, damn the lameness filter!)
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
We were warned not to touch Europa.
but I always am surprised when I hear these stories of how long bacteria can survive outside of normal conditions. 31 months on the moon, 4800 years in peruvian pyramids, 11000 years in a dead mastodon (extinct mammal sort of like an elephant), and (mabye) 300 million years in coal!
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
..has a lot more chances to survive on Europa which has Ice and presumably water. If you have read you Arthur C. Clarke you'd know that Jupiter is an "unlit" star so it's better suited to kill any leftover bacteria.
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
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?
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Will these rocks bring mutated bacteria previously carried to Mars by NASA robots?
/. in Spanish
BarraPunto the
...that Uranus is ours too? ;)
Moderators:this is a joke.
Jupiter has no solid surface, It is a gas giant. Technicaly it is a Brown Dwarf- which is a star that never got large enough to start a fusion chain reaction. It is extremely unlikely that any sentient life could form there, especialy considering the gravity is strong enough to compress the hydrogen atmosphere into a liquid metal at it's core, which produces the strongest magnetic field in the solar system.
Europa, on the other hand, has everything life needs to flourish. Water- most likely in a huge ocean under the surface ice, and energy- mainly geothermic energy produced by the mammoth gravitational force exerted by jupiter (the same ones that make io the most volcanicly active body in the solar system), as well as a phenominal amount of magnetic flux produced by hydrogens metalic core.
Now if you ask me, I'd prefer to burn a probe up in a dead star then a moon which could possibly support life.
is if jupiters magnetic field created a wormhole to a few billion years ago, and we sent a probe through which had a small amount of bacteria in it. It then lands on earth, and over the next few billion years ends up evolving into Humans...... what a paradox. What came first? the human or the probe ;-). Oh dear... my heads starting to hurt.
(Ok Ok I know... but I've just finished watching the new Planet of the Apes movie)
Do you like Galileo? Do you enjoy open spaces? Do you like crafts? Then you'll love the Galileo spacecraft.
Hmm, I thought that Jupiter was just a Ball of Gas - 'Crashes' may be the wrong word!!, 'To be consumbed by' may be more appropiate!!
I found a fact sheet about this little rock. Looks kinda like the asteroid phobos. (We made a non-crash landing on phobos, but I never heard if they took off again)
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.
The answer to your question is in 2061 Odyssey 3.
>
We can strip mine the rest later...
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NASA landed NEAR on Eros
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From: drizva@spacedefence.jupiter
To: pcachvoorsnrt@spacedefense.mars
Dear colleague,
We have recently become aware that those naughty Earthlings from the third planet are planning yet another attack on the solar system.
As you are well aware, those nasty Earth people have sent a number of projectiles slamming into your peaceful planet over the last few solar cycles. These atacks have become more sophisticated and have been increasing in numbers over time.
It now appears that a nuclear armed projectile that has been spying on our planetary system will be sent plunging into our atmosphere. The consequences of this act are grave and disturbing to say the least.
As a result of this latest attack, please be advised that we will be redirecting several asteroids from the main artillary field located between our two planets past your peaceful red planet toward the third planet in order to send a firm message to the Earthlings.
You will be happy to learn that once we have obliterated the Earth, you will then have an unobscured view of Venus.
Best Regards,
Drizva
Ummm, yeah. All its missing is not-being-above negative 200 degrees, and the whole wildly fluctuating temperatures of being a moon. So, if a giant fetus shows up and blows up Jupiter, i'm sure he'll be grateful we didn't put spores on Europa.
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.
If we're already spending millions of dollars on these machines, why don't we simply send em off into space in any direction taking pictures and mapping god-knows-what, then transmitting back to us until rapture? After the initial delay of sending the first image back to us, we would be getting a fairly consistent stream of images...at least until some object comes between, the signal strength wanes, or it crashes into something else (which is what it's doing now). Even the most focused spray of transmission back to us would do since as it gets further away, its transmit area would eventually cover our entire path through the solar system so that we wouldn't miss an image. I had a professor once that would probably say, "We never bring these billion-dollar toys back because those fascist, propagandizing bastards never sent em in the first place!"
Tidal stresses, such as the ones that drive the volcanos on Io, may produce enough heat to produce liquid water under the surface of Europa. And all you need is heat, hydrogen, and CO2 to have life.
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Basically, yes.
The idea is that some form of lander will land on Europa. Then either it, or a smaller probe carried by it will burrow down throught the ice and into the ocean below.
One approach to this may be for a bullet shaped probe to melt the ice. In the process of heating the ice the surface of the probe would be heated so high as to sterilise it. The melt water would then freeze behind the probe, sealing the surface again. The probe could then just burrow back up when it has finished.
I beleive that there is a group who plan to use the same idea to get a probe into a lake in the arctic/antarctic (can't remember which) which has ben sealed by ice for thousands of years to see what kind of life is down there.
This is only one possibility, and any mission is probably a long time in the future so who knows what we might be able to do.
However it is done, they will have to find some way of making sure that the probe is absolutly sterile.
Paul
Paul Leader
...we want to be sure it is native to Europa, not imported from earth by accident in a previous space mission. This is simply good science, nothing else, and is completely orthogonal to how well, or how poorly, we are acting as stewards of the Earth.
So get off your high horse and get over yourself, saving the whales and turning our backs on technology (I notice you are using a computer, including all kinds of hydrocarbon-generated electricity and toxic materials used, and dumped, in the creation of its components) to "save the earth" really has nothing whatsoever to do with Galileo's final trajectory past Io.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
..we want to be sure it is native to Europa, not imported from earth by accident in a previous space mission. This is simply good science, nothing else, and is completely orthogonal to how well, or how poorly, we are acting as stewards of the Earth.
Certainly, the major reason for going out of our way to avoid Europa is as you say (to avoid potentially introducing life where it did not exist before.) However, I would submit that it is also "good science" to ensure that a nuclear-powered spacecraft does not crash on and contaminate a terrestrial body suspected of harboring life. This is not "save the whales environmentalism"; it is common sense. Certainly you would not call a person who was opposed to detonating a nuclear device in the atmosphere on Earth to be a "save the whales" environmentalist?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Current Time, Somewhere in Nasa Headquarters: Dave and Frank, the Mission Directors, give the order to destroy the probe.
Nasa: Mr. Probe.. Change Heading to 15 Degrees Left, 20 Degrees Up.
Probe: I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that
Nasa: Why Can't you?
Probe: I know you and frank were planning to disconnect me.. and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen
Nasa: What the F$%K are you talking about.
Probe: I know you're really upset about this..I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.
Nasa: But..
probe: goodby
Click.
... which will prevent any kind of "hard" impact from a spaceship like Galileo from ever happening.
Burn up, disintigrate in the upper atmoshphere, scattering radiological material so finely as to be unnoticable against the naturally occuring background radiation of the planet (i.e. causing no harm whatsoever)? Sure, if things went wrong during the gravitational boost flyby of the earth. Bounce off harmlessly into space? Possibly, if the orbital angle of incidence to the atmosphere is below a certain value. Actually make physical contact with the surface of the planet and create a localized, highly toxic accident site or any kind of accident that puts anyone at any significant risk. Not if we lined up a billion of the things back to back in a frenzy of self-destructive ferver and actively tried to do so. The physics of atmospheric drag, the velocity and relatively small size of the spacecraft (relative to the size needed for a body at that speed to survive reentry and touch the surface without being vaporized first) make that an impossibility.
As everyone knew, except apparently for the knee-jerk reaction certain parties feel required to perform whenever the word "nuclear" or "atomic" is used with respect to any technological item.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Jupiter probably has a rocky core of 10-15 earth masses, according to NASA. Therefore, it is not simply a gas giant.
Secondly, it has 1/12th the mass necessary to become a brown dwarf, which can sustain true convection and deuterium fission (according to a couple other posts).
Liquid hydrogen at it's core? No.
Nevertheless, I think SETI would be in favor of a message in a bottle being sent out to sea versus having Columbus kill himself once he's found land. OK, I admit it. I'm a dreamer.
:-) The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft actually had plaques on board that contained, among other things, drawings of human beings and a description of the Solar System. There's a picture of the plaques here (there may be a better link, but this was the first one that I found in Google.)
This is actually a neat idea, though as you say, it's a long shot at best.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Just as we have found meteorites that originated from Mars on the surface of the earth, it is a near certainty that meteors have been blasted from the surface of the Earth by asteroid impacts, possibly seeding the entire solar system with bacterial spores already. Thus, if we do find life elsewhere in the solar system, we can never be 100%, absolutely sure it did not originate on Earth. The corollary is that we cannot be absolutely sure that life on Earth did not originate somewhere else.
The large ablative surface area is to help dissipate the reentry heat, not a cause of it. It's been a while since I looked at this, but I seem to recall that the stagnation temperature for air at the leading edge of a reentry vehicle was inversely proportional to the radius of that edge. That's why the Shuttle has a nice round nosecone: they don't dare look like the Concorde or a fighter jet, because the tips of those nice sharp noses would simply melt off.
This is one of the reasons why, despite the Earth being continually pelted by thousands of tons a day of asteroidal material, it's rare that anything makes it to the ground: the small stuff just vaporizes first.
Obviously the temperature can't go to infinity, so there has to be some reason (continuum hypothesis failing at small enough distances?) why it doesn't... but even for centimeter radii leading edges we've only recently discovered ceramics that we think can survive the resulting reentry temperatures. What would let bacterial micrometer radii survive?
I think your #1 is off, too. At the very least, a bacterium reaching the Earth from another planet would have to be moving at Earth's escape velocity (because that's the velocity Earth's gravity would impart to it as it approaches), and that is 40% faster than the Shuttle's reentry velocity.
I don't know about you, but when I think "car", I usually imagine something a bit more substantial than a 5hp electric motor strapped to a couple of aluminum bars and wiremesh wheels.
Even in full earth gravity, two or three average men can usually pick up and move a golf cart, and the moon buggy was substantially smaller and lighter than the average golf cart: it weighed all of 80 pounds.
Just what you need for, er, something or other.
The final three Apollo missions were largely devoted to geological surveys and sample-taking. The moon buggy was used to transport the astronauts to craters they would not have been able to reach on foot in order to fulfill those goals.
Ironically, it's those very rock samples that the lunar rover was used to help collect that provide the "hardest" (har har) evidence that the moon landings really happened and that you're a shit-spewing troll, as hundreds of independent geologists have examined the samples, and not one of them has claimed that they were from anywhere other than the moon.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
It sounds like they aren't going to send back any images from the Amalthea flyby in November. This is really idiotic -- this will be the first and *only* close flyby of that moon, and we won't get any images back, simply because they don't have the small budget it would require. Meanwhile, space station costs continue to spiral out of control, and just try to name *one* scientific discovery the space station has contributed to.
Looks like it's time to email / call / write your member of Congress.
Is it too late to make this load of bacteria a little more intelligent?
And pieces of the moon never land on earth do they?
Not unsullied by re-entry heat they don't. And certainly not in the form of cylindrical core samples including compressed surface dust.
Instead of making a fool out of yourself on slashdot, why don't you pick up an introductory geology textbook and do a little basic reading on a subject you seem to be simultaneously fascinated with and yet completely ignorant of.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
That's because:
1) the book was better
2) there was no silly coldwar stuff in the book
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Sorry, dude, but they didn't *CRASH* NEAR into Eros, they Soft Landed it.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
...t his whole idea of 'airing out my socks' isn't gonna do diddly. right?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Of course, if NASA believes that bacteria could have come to earth from mars rock, it would seem likely that every planet has a bit of the other planets on it, right? If Eurpoa could be contaminated, then it already should have been.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
If a bacterium can survive those conditions for that long, I'm sure a virus could also--especially since it's just a strand of DNA inside a shield. The first trip to the moon happened in 1969; many virologists place the hypothetical Case 0 in the same year (IIRC, Case 0 was purported to be an airline steward--maybe he swung with astronauts[??]). Maybe the virus was introduced to the earth that way?
Call me crazy, but I don't believe this is the case--I will acknowledge the possibility that it is true. This isn't as crazy as the conspiracy theory of AIDS. Anybody care to elaborate on this?
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I'm just superior to you.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
It wasn't Lt. Calley who said that, BTW. I see your .sig on Slashdot frequently and the inaccuracy bugs me.
... never mind that.
It was said by an Army officer in a famous TV interview, back in the days when villages were being rebuilt into strongpoints that supposedly would then defend themselves against Viet Cong infiltrators. This theory ignored the fact that the villagers mostly despised the current economic system and their obscenely corrupt government, and therefore welcomed the VC as prophets of change, but
The point of the statement was that the old village had to be destroyed and replaced with a new, fortified, Army-built strongpoint in order to save it from the VC. The officer (a Captain IIRC) didn't see the irony of the situation which his statement so succinctly summarized.
I don't remember Calley saying anything particularly memorable. "I was just following orders" was already a trite, worn-out phrase by then.
You're right. I had always thought it was Calley at My Lai.
.sig!
Damn! Now I'm gonna have to figure out a new
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I believe it was James Oberg who debunked this urban legend a while back-- the swabs used for taking the samples were contaminated by the researchers.
Galileo: Somebody set us up the bomb.
Bacteria: What you say!!
NASA: *Skkrt* You are on the path to destruction.
NASA: *Skrrt* You have no chance to survive make your time.
Bacteria: Noooooooooooo! Launch zig! We'll be safe on Europa!
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
What, you people think life is impossible on Jupiter? We don't know enough to say one way or the other. Who's to say Galileo's bacteria won't have some drastic effect on some Jovian life we are currently unaware of? Why contaminate Jupiter to save Europa from contamination? Why not just fling Galileo into the depths of space or into the sun if we want to get rid of it?
This smells to me of either not having been carefully thought through, or of unthinking assumptions that life must be impossible on Jupiter, when we simply don't know.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger