Goodbye, Galileo 341
deglr6328 writes "On the 21st of this month the Galileo Space Probe, which has been orbiting Jupiter for nearly eight years, will plummet fatefully into the crushing pressures and searing heat of that planet's interior. The spacecraft's 14 year journey has brought the discovery of, among other things, the first moon orbiting an asteroid, the first remote detection of life on earth when Carl Sagan used data from an onboard infrared spectrometer to observe the spectral signature of Oxygen in our atmosphere, it has caught snowflakes of Sulfur Dioxide as it flew through the plume of an erupting volcano on Io, snapped pictures of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 as it smashed into Jupiter's atmosphere and most importantly, provided proof a >60 Km deep ocean on Europa with hints of oceans on Callisto and Ganymede(listen to Ganymede's eerie sounding plasma wind). And all this with scarcely more computing power than a late '70s video game and a maximum data transfer rate of ~120 bits/s over a distance of more than 600 million Km. In a mission spanning three decades, the Galileo space probe has answered many of humanity's questions about space and presented us with the knowledge to ask many more which will be answered by the next generation of Jovian explorer. Goodnight Galileo."
Popular Science Article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Building them like they used to (Score:2, Informative)
Surely you are not claiming that Hubble was cheap? It was the most expensive piece of mass sent to space. More than 3 billion was spent just to build the thing, not to mention three shuttle missions and millions spent in the operations.
The science it produced is worth the price but it wasn't cheap.
Transcipt from last Galileo probe (Score:5, Informative)
Time Event
________ _____
11:04 a.m. Coast timer initiates probe operation
12:46 p.m. Orbiter flyby of Io (~1000 km) (No imaging or spectral data collected)
2:04 p.m. Energetic Particles Investigation (EPI) begins measuring trapped radiation in a region previously unexplored.
5:04 p.m. Probe entry and data relay
5:05:52 p.m. Pilot parachute deployed
5:05:54 p.m. Main Parachute deployed
5:06:02 p.m. Deceleration module jettisoned
5:06:06 p.m. Direct scientific measurements begin
5:06:15 p.m. Radio transmission to orbiter begins
~5:08 p.m. Visible cloud tops of Jupiter reached
5:12 p.m. Atmospheric pressure the same as Earth's sea-level pressure
5:17 p.m. Second major cloud deck is encountered (uncertain)
5:28 p.m. Water clouds entered (uncertain)
5:34 p.m. Atmospheric temperature equal to room temperature on Earth
5:46 p.m. Probe enters twilight
6:04 p.m. End of baseline mission. Probe may cease to operate due to lack of battery power, attenuation of signal due to atmosphere, or being crushed.
6:19 p.m. Orbiter ceases to receive probe data (if still transmitting)
7:27 p.m. Ignition of Galileo main engine (49 minute duration) to insert into Jovian orbit
Re:Building them like they used to (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Building them like they used to (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Plop! (Score:5, Informative)
That's why they are ditching it in said manner.
Re:$1.5 billion well spent (Score:4, Informative)
Now, Nasa is planning on plunging 34 pounds of Plutonium into the planet. That's 3.4 * 10^1 pounds. Hmm... 10^1 versus 10^27. Do I need to say more? I mean... honestly, this is friggin' ridiculous!
Re:Why not send it back to Earth? (Score:3, Informative)
Um...how? That would require a truly ridiculous amount of delta-vee, and it's pretty much out of gas.
Re:Building them like they used to (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, recent NASA projects haven't been particularly ambitious, because of a lack of sufficient funding for that. However, with a replacement for the shuttle fleet on Congress's minds, and shows of interest in space from Russia and especially China, NASA will hopefully get more funding to do interesting stuff (and to develop the necessary technologies, which are the really interesting results).
Re:Communications potential of space probes? (Score:5, Informative)
Galileo was equipped with a high-bandwidth communications link capable of doing a much better job with image transmission, but its antenna failed to deploy. Because higher-bandwidth channels have a higher noise floor, a consequence of Shannon's Theorem is that higher-bandwidth wireless communications requires higher effective radiated power. Without the high-gain antenna, the normal image-transmission link was useless. As a result, the project engineers had to reconfigure a low-power, low-bandwidth auxiliary link to do the same job.
It was actually really cool (and really lucky) that they could do that at all.
Re:Oxygen != Life (Score:2, Informative)
There was no oxygen atmosphere on Earth before life. Oxygen is the most abundant element here, but because it's so fond of oxidising things, you don't find it free unless some active process is constantly pumping it out. Like, green plants that need carbon to grow and found a handy source. Venus, for instance, has a carbon dioxide atmosphere, because there are no plants to convert it. Leave oxygen in the presence of most anything else and it'll all get bound up.
So yes, seeing oxygen in a planetary atmosphere is a strong indicator of life there. Seeing it in a so-called planetary nebula, not so much, but that's a whole different environment (and it's notable that even that oxygen will be bound up well inside a million years).
Re:It's not the size. It's how you use it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Building them like they used to (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This shows how geeky Im am... (Score:2, Informative)
Care to explain how they are related? Education is not a federal mandate under the constitution and though it's been a while I know for a fact that the funding of sports programs at schools definately isn't a federal mandate, Title X or no Title X.
Not exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
If you just look at a university's budget and see X income from grants and Y from ticket sales and etc., and expenditures X/2 for research and 2Y for athletics (after all, only men's football and basketball programs ever have a hope in hell of ever reaching the break even point--sad but true for now) then athletics are just a drain on the university. But I'm not so blinded by my intense hatred of the Athletics Department to say that it doesn't bring in money--it just does so in a very roundabout way. Private donations are very important to the survival of the university. People might donate becuase of a sense of pride in the university or out of nostalgia, but while academic research doesn't rank high on most people's minds for either of these two things, the old football and basketball teams often do. Similarly, a good sports program may grease the wheels a bit for what little funding we get through the state. How much income from private donations and the state can be indirectly attributed to athletics is very hard to say. Does it surpass research grants? Probably at some universities. But it is worth noting that there are schools that do just fine without athletics and still get piles from grants, the state, and private donations.
Re:three decades? (Score:5, Informative)
Ob Bladerunner Reference (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely must fund JIMO (Score:3, Informative)
JIMO, or Jupiter Icy Moons Orbitor, is the planned successor to Galileo. It will carry with it a nuclear electric propulsion plant. With this much power on board, the spacecraft will not only be able to get to Jupiter much more quickly, it will be able to bounce powerful radar waves off of Europa and measure the thickness of Europa's icy crust.
Nuclear power in space is important, and will allow us to get to other planets quickly.