Galileo To Commit Mechacide

taylor writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the old explorer spacecraft Galileo will soon commit suicide after flying a final mission. The spacecraft has been orbiting Juptiter for seven years. Tomorrow, Galileo will pass Amalthea, a tiny moon of that planet, to gather information about the moon's gravitational pull on the spacecraft, and thus about its material makeup. Immediately thereafter, Galileo will move quickly through Jupiter's rings, exposing itself to 100 times the radiation a human could withstand. The spacecraft will likely not survive; it is already crippled from the large amounts of radiation it has encountered thus far. In any case, Galileo will then begin its final orbit of Jupiter, ending next September in a fatal crash into the planet's dense atmosphere. Read the full article on SMH.com.au."

Comments

Stand forth and acknowledge

[devphil]

Its camera and tape recorder are playing up, it is almost out of the fuel needed to control balance and its voice has been reduced to a whisper, thanks to its main antenna jamming shut years ago, cutting the expected flood of information and pictures to a trickle.

Tomorrow, as Galileo sweeps closer to Jupiter than ever, it will encounter twice as much radiation.

They don't build 'em like they used to. RIP, Galileo.

farewell

[JimFromJersey]

Farewell and following seas, brave explorer.

Better, More Expensive, Slower

[zer0vector]

Galileo is one of the prime examples of how good NASA can be when its not trying to cut corners. Sure it takes 10 years to develop a mission, and costs a couple billion, but they work far beyond their expected lifetimes. Galileo and the Voyager spacecraft just go to show that you get what you pay for. Even malfunctions like Galileo's infamous antenna are not mission ending failures for a sturdily built craft.

Re:Better, More Expensive, Slower

[Black Copter Control]

Everything NASA does could have been accomplished much cheaper and better by a private company, with very little corruption, inefficiency, and wasted resources.

And everything that Enron or Worldcom does could have been done by a government organization with "very little corruption, inefficiency, and wasted resources." The two are simply different ways of doing things. Neither is really intrinsicly better than the other. In both cases, a decent method of oversight is needed.

It should be noted, however, that it is very unlikely that one could have convinced a private company to do what NASA is doing in terms of basic exploration -- especially basic exploration where the resulting knowledge is available to the public.

Yes we could have paid a public corporation to create a probe like Galileo, but that is essentially what NASA did. Much of what Nasa does is chose which company is going to be making the probes, the Shuttle, etc.

On the other hand, What private corporation with a sane mind would have seriously considered taking on what NASA has done? it's taken decades of ($Billions++ ) net-loss basic research and exploration to get us to the point where private corporations are taking a serious look at doing their own space research. Without NASA we would not have the basic technology and space knowledge needed for a company to seriously consider such an effort.