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Space Science

Galileo, Consumed by Jupiter 256

Posted by jamie from the faithful-servant dept.
Conceived in 1977, launched in 1989, the spacecraft Galileo ends its 34th orbit exactly one hour from now, hitting the atmosphere at 48 kilometers a second. In its long history, it taught us much, despite the failure of its main antenna that left only its tiny backup to send data, but its enduring legacy will always be the discovery that Europa's icy crust hides a planetary saltwater ocean. That ocean's potential for alien life is why the craft will self-vaporize: to avoid possible terrestrial contamination. The JPL's webcast starts roughly now, and should last about two hours (light delay). Don't miss the view from the prow and impact animations. If you're into these spacecraft and the people who build them, read Journey Beyond Selene. And while we grieve for Galileo today, remember, orbital insertion for Cassini-Huygens is only 283 days away!

We ran stories about Galileo's impending incineration earlier this month and last November when the plan was decided.

Here is a typical passage from Journey Beyond Selene, about the worst glitch in Galileo's mission, and the beginnings of how it would be worked around. Failures and the engineers who salvage them are the recurring tragic, triumphant story of our missions into space. Reproduced without permission:

With such triply redundant hardware built into their spacecraft, mission planners could feel confident that they had designed a communications system that was almost completely resistant to failure, and for the first eighteen months after Galileo's 1989 launch, there was no reason to assume anything would fail. Finally, on April 11, 1991, when the ship's trajectory had spiraled out as far as the edge of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, JPL planners decided it was at last probably safe to unlock the high-gain antenna and spread its ribs. It was only then that they'd learn if triply redundant was redundant enough.

Though the deployment of the high-gain system was not a complicated exercise, it was a critical one, and for that reason the chieftans of the Galileo project made sure they were there to watch it happen. On hand at the flight director's console that afternoon were mission director Neal Ausman, deputy mission director Matt Landanow, and project manager Bill O'Neil. O'Neil and Ausman were far and away the higher ranking of the three men, but Landanow, they all knew, was far and away the most knowledgeable. As chief engineer during the Galileo design phase, he had familiarized himself with every strut, nut and rivet of the ship, and could practically describe their placement and purpose from memory alone. If anything went wrong this afternoon, Landanow would likely be the first person to recognize it -- and the first person to come up with a way to fix it.

For the first forty minutes or so after the deployment command went up, O'Neil, Ausman and Landanow had little to do. Like so many other JPL controllers before them, they knew they would have to tolerate the nonnegotiable limits of light speed, waiting twenty minutes as their signal traveled from Pasadena to the spacecraft and then another twenty minutes as it traveled back again. For that entire time their screens told them nothing, flickering merely with the self-evident information that their command had indeed been sent. Finally, after just over the anticipated forty minutes had elapsed, a column of numbers began to blink on the glass. Landanow gave the figures a quick scan and immediately noticed something amiss. He read them again -- a bit more closely -- and this time started to feel downright queasy. The antenna, from all indications, was pulling what the engineers called stall current. The motor was drawing power, the deployment gears were engaged, but the ribs of the umbrella appeared to be going nowhere at all.

"We're stuck," Landanow said flatly.

"How can you tell?" O'Neil asked.

"The current is saturated, something is jammed," Landanow said. "In any event, the antenna's not budging."

Ausman gave the numbers on the screen a read of his own, confirmed what Landanow was saying, and immediately called out to his flight controllers, instructing them to send a second deployment command up to the ship. The engineers complied, and forty minutes later another stall signal came down. A third command yielded a third signal, and a fourth a fourth. With each new report Landanow winced. If he knew this ship -- and he surely did -- he could all but guarantee that whatever was hanging up the antenna was not much: a single too-tight fitting, perhaps, a single protruding bolt, one that was situated in just such a way that it managed to jam all eighteen ribs. If it were somehow possible to transport the Galileo spacecraft to a hangar in Pasadena, Landanow knew he could probably roll over a stepladder, climb up to the antenna, and spring it free with his hands alone. But Galileo was not in a hangar in Pasadena; it was tens of millions of miles away, at the edge of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and more elaborate measures would be necessary.
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Galileo, Consumed by Jupiter

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  • transcript from last time this happened in 1995 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by andy666 ( 666062 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:59PM (#7018688)
    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

  • Goodbye (Score:4, Interesting)

    by c_oflynn ( 649487 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:02PM (#7018706)
    Well it has served well - long past how long it was supposed to.

    It's history has been plagued with problems, ones it has overcame.

    If any spacecraft would show the history and power of space travel, I think this probe is one of them.
    • it has served well - long past how long it was supposed to.

      It's history has been plagued with problems, ones it has overcome

      the human adventure is only beginning...

  • Wrong tense (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP&ColinGregoryPalmer,net> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:03PM (#7018710) Homepage
    Galileo, Consumed by Jupiter

    Conceived in 1977, launched in 1989, the spacecraft Galileo ends its 34th orbit exactly one hour from now

    Little early for the past tense 'consumed' don't you think?

    (I can already see the 'not any more' post below this one in an hour)
    • Little early for the past tense 'consumed' don't you think?

      Well, Jim, it sure as hell ain't going anywhere else... As good as consumed, I'd say.

    • Re:Wrong tense (Score:2, Funny)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )
      Little early for the past tense 'consumed' don't you think?

      By the time this ungodly slashdotting ends and I will finally be able to see NASA's pages on the topic, Galileo will already be consumed by Jupiter... so in a way, it's probably correct.

    • Re:Wrong tense (Score:2, Informative)

      by p3d0 ( 42270 )
      Did you notice the comma? It's not "Galileo consumed by Jupiter", which is past tense. It's "Galileo, consumed by Jupiter" which has no tense.

  • Outstanding achievement (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:06PM (#7018729)
    I was reading this article earlier and I was thinking what a sickening feeling it must have been when they realised that the main antennae was not going to deploy properly leaving them up the creek so to speak. I think its a brilliant achievent that they managed to recover from this huge setback, reprogram the vehicle, retask the mission to focus on the Jovian moons and still get so much useful information. A very cool piece of engineering improvisation.

    • Re:Outstanding achievement (Score:5, Informative)

      by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:23PM (#7018837) Journal
      The quest to get usable data out of Galileo has driven some of the world's most advanced communication and signal processing algorithms over the past few years. AS a result they were able to achieve a better than ten fold increase in data rate from 10 bps to a maximum of 120 bps, a pretty spectacular achievement that saved the mission. You can read the technical details here [nasa.gov]
      • It must have been at least five times higher (600bps) in order to get the 30Gb they mention in the articles. And since it probably started transmitting lots of valuable info only halfway into the mission, it might have been as high as 1200bps on average, which means something like 2400bps (my first modem!) or even higher occasionally.
    • Yeah, it really was quite a feat. Although it's not that shocking: the folks at JPL have recovered missions from so many engineering SNAFUs that they deserve canonization. (The Cassini-Huyegens problem also springs to mind, along with Apollo 13, NEAR/Shoemaker, and others.)

      Still, NASA doesn't often point this out, but we did lose out on a lot of data. In particular, the cloud observations were pretty much scrapped altogether. (Rather than look at the clouds during much of its Jovian orbit, Galileo had

  • Watching online (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:06PM (#7018730)
    FYI, NASA TV has a live webcast here [nasa.gov]. UATV [alaska.edu] is another place to watch as they are rebroadcasting the NASA channel...

    • Re:Watching online (Score:4, Funny)

      by Darkman, Walkin Dude ( 707389 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:09PM (#7018754) Homepage
      Cheers, didn't know which was going down faster... Galileo or the NASA webcast...

    • Re:Watching online (Score:3, Informative)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      There a a billion (or so) CU-SeeMe repeaters of NASA Select, and they also broadcast on the Multibone.

      The CU-SeeMe transmissions are B/W and fairly small image, but update much faster than the webcast.

      The multicast version is in full color, and appears to be 1/2 NTSC image size. (It pixellates slightly at larger sizes.)

      If you've access to the MBone, I strongly recommend getting SDR, VIC and RAT from the MICE project, over at UCL. There should be links to these projects from Freshmeat. There are binari

  • It's probes like this... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kevinatilusa ( 620125 ) <kcostell@@@gmail...com> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:08PM (#7018742)
    that show that "faster, better, cheaper" shouldn't mean cutting as many corners as possible while earthside. Galileo was probably one of the top few probes ever on a measure of information learned per dollar spent NOT because we saved money while building it, but because it was built so well that it just kept on transmitting when by all rights it should have gone quiet a long time ago.

  • Live webcast? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chicane-UK ( 455253 ) <chicane-uk@@@ntlworld...com> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:13PM (#7018775) Homepage
    The JPL's webcast starts roughly now, and should last about two hours (light delay).

    Hehe.. and just so that it doesn't feel left out, that JPL webserver is currently experiencing what its like to get smashed into Jupiter at 48km/s :)

    Good old Slashdot.
    • for the non metricaly inclined, the JPL server is travelling at 29.82 miles per second, or 107,000 miles per hour.
      If you are thinking "what about significant figures?" then no one loves you.

  • The suspense is unimaginable! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dan Weaver ( 646556 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:16PM (#7018798) Homepage
    I've been looking forward to Galileo's collision with Jupiter for weeks. I can't wait to see which one wins!
  • And while we grieve for Galileo today, remember, orbital insertion for Cassini-Huygens is only 283 days away!

    I am grieving that the satellite exploring jupiter is dieing. How should I be happy with a satellite that is exploring saturn? I nominate Galelio for nobel prize in science.

  • Alternate feeds of NASA TV (Score:4, Informative)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:18PM (#7018812)
    Since Jamie rather thoughtlessly posted a direct link to the JPL real stream and now none of us can see it; please visit NASA's website listing all the alternate feeds for NASA TV [nasa.gov] and use one of these instead.

  • Slashdot saves Galileo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:19PM (#7018815) Homepage Journal
    NASA Press Release: Due to an unprecedented amount of web traffic on the announcement of the Galileo space probe's imminent plunge into the Jovian atmosphere, the Galileo comms computing center was brought to its knees. NASA engineers showed their ingenuity once more, as the flood of internet traffic was directed to the Galileo probe itself, heating Transistor QB-2542a, allowing the main antenna to unfold and allow the original planned communication range, in addition to acting as a miniature solar sail to push Galileo on a recovery arc around Jupiter. NASA Galileo Command would like to extend appreciation to Slashdot and its readers for allowing the unqualified successes of the Galileo mission to continue.

  • RealBad (Score:5, Funny)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:20PM (#7018820) Journal
    The JPL's webcast starts roughly now

    Crap. All NASA offers is RealPlayer.

    Miss seeing Galileo crash into Jupiter
    or
    Spend thirty minutes clicking half a dozen hidden, misleadingly named submenu checkboxes to retain my privacy. And then spend three days un-doing RealPlayer's attempt to take over my entire system and all file extensions.

    Screw it. I won't download any insertions into bodies no matter how heavenly if it's in RealPlayer format. Definitely not gonna start with something's that not porn. I'll catch the 2 minute recap on the news.

  • This is quite cool (Score:2, Interesting)

    by UltraWide ( 181644 )
    This spacecraft has been in a very hostile environment for a long time now and to kill it they have to plunge it into the biggest planet in our solarsystem. That is what I call engineering.

    The strange thing though is that their site (Nasa) cannot hold up on the preasure from slashdot.

  • This is what I dont get about light cones and relativity. We know that the probe will hit jupiter at ~ 19:00GMT, however we cant see it happen until nearly an hour later. Does this mean it doesnt happen until nearer 20:00GMT? Is it something to do with Scrodinger's cat? Because theres no way for us to know its not hit the planet does it mean it hasn't?
    • You're getting into trouble because you're assuming that time is constant. In practice time is a function of velocity. There is no absolute 19:00GMT.

      If you board a hypothetical spacecraft right which can travel at say, 0.9c so you'll get to jupiter in time to watch the event. If you take your stopwatch with you you'll see that only a few minutses went by since you boarded the spacecraft. However for the rest of us an hour will have passed since you left. It doesn't quite make sense to say that the crash w

      • Relativity is fun, innit?

        No
      • The clock on galileo is pretty much the same as the clock on earth isn't it - after all it was only traveling at 0.00004c. If I flew out there in my fast space ship, I know my clock will change, but I can reset it to "Earth time" when I get to galeleo as

        1) I can see the time on earth (big telescope), and know how far in light seconds I am away
        2) I can see the time on galileo which is the time on earth give or take a nanosecond.

        However, why am I flying towards galileo? Time goes slow for me because I'm mov
        • However, why am I flying towards galileo? Time goes slow for me because I'm moving from galileo's POV, but from my POV galileo is flying towards me. Yeah I know its the twins paradox, but I never understood the resolving of it

          You are basically saying, if you get in a spaceship, and blast off towards Jupiter, is it you moving or Jupiter. It seems obvious, but how do we know??? Well, you were the one who accelerated... you turned some potential energy into kinetic energy with your rocket (increasing your
          • Yes. Or If I'm on the spacecraft and someone on earth sees me at 0.9c, and I launch another clock back to earth at the same speed, that clock is accelerating away from me, so should be going slower then me (who is already slower then earth). However it is not moving relative to earth, so should be going at the same speed of earth? Shouldnt it?
            • Velocity is always relative. There is no single "middle of the universe" so every speed is relative. If the second spacecraft is stationary relative to earth, then its clock will run at the same speed as a terrestial clock.
              • But it accelerated away from the first space craft, who's clock was going slower then earths (from an observer outside the solar system). Surely by accelerating away from the spacecraft your clock will be slow relative to that spacecraft.
      • There is no constant in the universe but c.

        Bet? [ldolphin.org] (-:

        Or if you prefer something less radical, consider that there are a number of other constants tied to c; in other words, they are as constant as c is.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by Enonu ( 129798 )
    Could somebody tell me the logic of why we destroy probes after their useful life is over? I'm sure my great-great-great grandchildren would get a kick of being able to fly to Jupiter and retrieve the probes themselves. It's an important piece of history, and I don't see why we need to initiate its own destruction.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by applemasker ( 694059 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:19PM (#7019194)
      Because of Galileo's extemely elliptical orbit -- think of a comet around the sun -- (required because it's mission was to visit most of Jupiter's moons), it's constantly in need of tweaking in the form of thruster firings to keep it from blundering into something (besides Jupiter) while still keeping its antennae pointed towards Earth.

      The maneuvering fuel is nearly gone, and the spacecraft components have sustained many tens of times their design tolerances of radiation. Taken together, it's entirely possible that Galileo would soon become uncontrollable and crash somewhere like Eurpoa, where we may one day send probes to search for life. Because Galileo was not sterilized before launch, it would contaminate wherever it ended up, and could cast doubt of any future test results from expeditions there.

      (As a testimony to the hardiness of life, microbes on a camera lens or something were brought to and back from the moon, it wasn't until later that they realized someone sneezed on the lens or some nonsense and the damn bugs survived the whole round trip).

      While it would be nostalgic to have left Galileo in orbital purgatory around Jupiter, it's not possible to do this with any assurance that it won't later be a hazard. It is fitting, in a way, that Galileo will become part of Jupiter, the target of so much of its (and his) focus. If only NASA would bring the success of this mission into the public spotlight as a way to raise awareness as to its more successful programs.

      Coming soon to Saturn - Cassini, July 4, 2004. (Alas, the last of the "great explorer" probes.)

    • We usually don't, but as there is a good(by comparison) chance Europa has life, we don't want to risk Galileo crashing there.

    • Re:Why? Life (?) at risk! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Frodo420024 ( 557006 ) <(kd.nrognaf) (ta) (kirneh)> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:34PM (#7019602) Homepage Journal
      Could somebody tell me the logic of why we destroy probes after their useful life is over?

      Briefly, it's because it might otherwise crash into Europe (the moon, not the continent). It has itself discovered that conditions (water) exists on Europe that might habour life (however primitive), and crashing a sattelite from Earth with possible bacteria might contaminate Europe (the moon) with lethal bacteria.

      It might sound like far-fetched science fiction - it ain't. It's the official reason for the Jupiter crash.

  • Hehe (Score:3, Funny)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:58PM (#7019051)
    I bet they miss!!

  • from a telemetry station in JPL... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lone_marauder ( 642787 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:02PM (#7019072)

    "Hey, look we finally got the antenna open.. oh, wait, never mind."

  • Last post! (Score:5, Funny)

    by clovis ( 4684 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:05PM (#7019089)
    It's gone. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.

  • picture of the last minute... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by joeldg ( 518249 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:06PM (#7019097) Homepage
    Here is an image of my browser which managed to make it to the webserver in the last minute before Galileo crashed into Jupiter.

    http://lucifer.intercosmos.net/g.jpg

    It is kind of sad..
    and I don't know why.

  • "...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins."

    --Bertrand Russell
    (from "A Free Man's Worship")

  • Relative to ...? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by carambola5 ( 456983 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:39PM (#7019309) Homepage
    48 kilometers a second

    So, that's 48 km/s relative to what? If it's correct to assume the writer meant "relative to Jupiter," then that is ridiculously fast. IIRC, typical orbits around Earth manage only ~8-10km/s.

    Yes, I realize Jupiter is larger than Earth, but still...

    • Re:Relative to ...? (Score:3, Informative)

      by HeghmoH ( 13204 )
      Jupiter is not "larger" than Earth, it's a whole hell of a lot larger than Earth. According to Google:

      mass of Jupiter / mass of Earth = 317.816611

      So Jupiter has 317 times the mass of Earth. That's why the orbit is faster.

    • Re:Relative to ...? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imnoteddy ( 568836 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:42PM (#7019637)
      So, that's 48 km/s relative to what? If it's correct to assume the writer meant "relative to Jupiter," then that is ridiculously fast. IIRC, typical orbits around Earth manage only ~8-10km/s.

      Metis [MEE-tis] is the innermost known satellite of Jupiter. According to this page [solarviews.com] Metis orbits at a mean distance of 127,969 km with a Mean orbital velocity of 31.57 km/sec. So 48 km/sec is not so ridiculous.

    • It's just that much bigger than Earth. The figure startled me at first, too.

      It's amazing that the atmosphere probe, which entered at 47 km/sec, managed a controlled deceleration and survived.

  • What if it finds a monolith there? What then? Has anyone thought about this?
  • Yah, sure, they crashed this one *on purpose*. They forgot Jupiter was so big is my guess.

    Tell me another story, Grampa.

    I ain't buyin' it. NASA just screwed up again and arranged the phony paper trail on their website, complete with press releases, as a massive coverup. Hey, if they can make up a Moon Shot (Capricorn One? Galileo 2003? Sure!) then they can definitely cover up a screwup like this one.

  • USA Attacks Jupiter!?!?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ferrellcat ( 691126 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:21PM (#7019511)
    First, Afganistan, then Iraq, and now JUPITER!!!

    When will this administration stop?!?!?!?
    • First, Afganistan, then Iraq, and now JUPITER!!!

      When will this administration stop?!?!?!?

      Wow! You're hysterical! Even more hysterical is that "this administration" that was around when Galileo was conceived was the Nobel Peace Prize winning 38th President of the USA, Jimmy Carter.
    • Hey, we didn't start this war! Remember September 11th, 2001? And recently, British Intelligence has learned that Jupiter tried to buy uranium from Venus.

  • Requiescat 1802 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:24PM (#7019532)
    Some of my earliest development work for embedded systems was done on the old 1802 processor. The intended environments were transportation related and pretty hostile. It's nice to know that we made such a good choice, and that an 1802 holds the record for the longest traveled microprocessor ever built.

    You may not have had a proper subroutine mechanism, you may have had a bizarre instruction set (with a SEX instruction no less), but you were the first processor for which I ever wrote a set of floating point routines. Rest in peace, old friend.

  • If JPL had just asked, I would have suggested sending Galileo down the center of the polar eye. [nasa.gov]

    Cassini sent the movie of Jupiter's pole as it flew by on its way to Saturn. Given the enormous winds on Jupiter, the eye could extend a dive into the atmosphere a lot further than going in anywhere else as the pressure has got to be substantially lower inside the eye. Getting a signal out of there would be tricky but just try and imagine what's at the bottom of the eye.

  • Anybody got an copy of it? (yes you can save Real Steams)

  • Well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mike3k ( 574665 ) <mike3k@gmDEBIANail.com minus distro> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:19PM (#7019824) Homepage
    At least it didn't get stuck in Uranus.

  • the saddest part... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
    the saddest part is that the craft went on the blind side of jupiter before it went down. [cnn.com] So, we didn't get to see its final transmition. Did some scientist at NASA do that on purpose, to let it die with dignity?
    What it also means is we don't actually know for certain that it crashed. I mean, maybe on the blind side it pulled back up, was rescued by a spacecraft, or...who knows! Wasn't ther ean old original Star Trek that went along those lines? An old space probe that went nuts, and spawned a civiliza

  • Fox news (Score:3, Funny)

    by rodionpunk ( 68764 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:49PM (#7019983) Homepage
    I think my favorite commentary on it was from Fox news here last night, which noted that if the plutonium core exploded, then "it would disrupt the entire galaxy." This, after a perfectly fine report on Galileo. It was the last sentence of their blurb -- something to give you warm fuzzies, I guess.

    I was wondering what level of disturbance would be required before the entire galaxy was "disrupted" -- simply being visible across the entire galaxy, a tremor like an earthquake, or something more sinister? Perhaps Fox needs a galactic Richter scale to better scare the masses. "It's a 0.00009 on the Asimov scale, which doesn't seem like much and we won't feel any effects; but if you were there, you'd be killed, alright!"
  • I'm not sure why this story is being posted now. "Galileo consumed by Jupiter" happened in around 1610. Galileo's consuming obsession with Jupiter ultimately led to his condemnation for heresy in 1633. This is a totally appropriate subject for Slashdot's righteous indignation, but is kind of late in coming, especially since he was exonerated (sort of, John Paul II waffled a bit [st-and.ac.uk]) in 1992.

    Don't forget, this is Slashdot, no need for me to RTFA.

  • NASA is working on a really, super exciting project called Jupitor Icey Moons Orbitor. This project, should it be allowed to proceed with full funding, would:

    a) Create a space based nuclear reactor
    b) Use that reactor to power an ion engine
    c) Use that ion engine to not only get to Jupiter in record time, but also to explore all of the major moons and for months at a time.
    d) The power from the nuclear plant would be used to do a deep penetrating radar scan of Europe and the other icey moons. This will allo
  • While I agree that Europa looks promising as a potential well of life, are we so sure that Jupiter is sterile? Some SF writers have suggested that bouyant lifeforms could live at some appropriately warm and dense level of the Jupiter's atmosphere. If creatures on Earth can thrive on the chemical energy in our planet's relatively weak geothermal hot spots, who knows what might exist in the roiling depths of the Jovian atmosphere.

    I am really not that worried. Between the years in a hard vacuum, bazillio

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