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Space

Galileo's Final Blaze of Glory 275

Posted by timothy 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."
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Galileo's Final Blaze of Glory More

Galileo's Final Blaze of Glory

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  • Pollution (Score:4, Funny)

    by joebp ( 528430 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:11AM (#2847410) Homepage
    It's extremely good that they're being so careful and sensitive with other planets/their moons. The worst thing we could do is pollute everywhere, limiting our options when we finally give up raping this planet.

    I just wish mankind could be this careful with its native planet.

    (mod me as you will...)

    • Earth First! (Score:4, Funny)

      by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @07:34AM (#2847562) Journal
      We can strip mine the rest later...

    • If we find life on Europa (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @09:00AM (#2847760)
      ...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.

      • You're both right. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cje ( 33931 )
        ..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?
      • <SARCASM>
        More importantly, we don't want to violate the Prime Directive.

        Meteor Proves Life Exists Outside Europa; Church Attendance Plummets

        By Kang Kodos
        Europa Press Religion Writer

        An oddly-shaped meteor fell from the sky at 1:24PM KST yesterday and crashed into one of Kataan province's largest churches.

        A thorough inspection of the rock revealed tiny life forms heretofore unknown to Europeans. Prominent religionists hailed the event as proof that we are not alone in the Jupiter System, but cautioned that it could have far more profound effects.

        "We may seriously have to question the existence of Dog," said Arch-Bluejay Glick. "Why would she have allowed these creatures to destroy one of her houses?"

        The odd shape and markings on the meteor have lead religionists to suggest that the life forms may possess an intelligence far more advanced than our own, but all attempts to communicate with the life forms have failed thus far.
        </SARCASM>

  • Somebody has to say this (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mik!tAAt ( 217976 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:15AM (#2847418) Homepage
    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!)
    • ...that Uranus is ours too? ;)

      Moderators:this is a joke.
    • The 2010 accounts of the Europa landing differed in the book compared to the movie. In neither case was the Earth punished as a whole.

      Therefore, I say lets try it just to see if we can get away with it. I mean, how bad could it hurt? What are they gonna do, send buzillions of monoliths to squash us too? In any case, an accidental crashlanding would not really qualify as an formal attempt, would it?

    • It's cool; the ultimatum was delivered in 2010. Check your calendar it's all good.

  • I know I should'nt be (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nzhavok ( 254960 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:16AM (#2847420) Homepage
    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!

  • Question! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SevenTowers ( 525361 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:20AM (#2847431) Homepage
    this is from "on the moon" article:
    "... could life on this planet be descended from alien spores? ...Panspermia, the view that the seed of life is diffused throughout the universe, has been favored by a minority of thinkers since the Greek Anaxagoras in the 5th century BC. He, Arrhenius and Fred Hoyle may yet have the laugh on us doubters."


    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?

    • Re:Question! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dimwit ( 36756 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:40AM (#2847459)
      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.
      • Yeah, but spores don't just travel in space (right?)! they are tied to some piece of rock that got blasted out of a planet or something. Plus another thing I've thought about : radiation! Don't astronauts wear several layers of protection so that they don't turn into bacon?

        Anyway, if the rock theory is right, the bacteria spores should vaporize with the heat!
        • Don't astronauts wear several layers of protection so that they don't turn into bacon?

          Yes, but humans aren't exactly the most radiation-tolerant creatures out there. Cockroaches are hundreds of times more radiation-tolerant than humans. Some bacteria are apparently considerably more radiation-tolerant again.

      • You've got #2 wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

        by roystgnr ( 4015 )
        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.
    • 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?

      Essentially, objects in space are very cold, and don't spend very long passing through the atmosphere, quoting from an article at Science@Nasa [nasa.gov]:

      Objects from space that enter Earth's atmosphere are -- like space itself -- very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. "The outer layers are warmed by atmospheric friction, and little bits flake away as they descend," explains Yeomans. This is called ablation and it's a wonderful way to remove heat. (Some commercial heat shields use ablation to keep spacecraft cool when they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.) "Rocky asteroids are poor conductors of heat," Yeomans continued. "Their central regions remain cool even as the hot outer layers are ablated away."

    • Re:Question! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by T-Punkt ( 90023 )
      > Or does the inside of a big enough asteroid stay cool?

      Yes, it does. Small meteroits (i.e. those that don't create big craters) found on earth shortly after they came down are often covered with frost.

      Quote from this article:
      http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/news/salisburyme te or.html

      "I was suspicious immediately, because small meteorites should not start fires. This is a very common misconception. Meteors are hot only for a short time, when atmospheric drag heats them up in a relatively complicated process. However, they slow so rapidly during this time that they reach terminal velocity-- at most a couple of hundred kilometers per hour-- while still high up. This gives them plenty of time to cool during the several minutes it takes to fall the rest of the way to the ground. As a matter of fact, the inside of the meteorite is still as cold as the ambient temperature of space, so many of them are covered in frost when found!"
    • The interior of a meteorite that is large enough to survive re-entry, but small enough not to blast a crater, is untouched and unheated. An ablation crust forms that is only a millimeter or so thick. Bacterial spores can survive in the interior of the rock, untouched by the heat of re-entry.
    • could life on this planet be descended from alien spores?

      Shh. Keep it quiet, but you're on the right track. There's a documentary you should see, called "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The government managed to spin-doctor it before it came out, but it ain't sci-fi, it's HISTORY man.

  • Why wait until next year for the fireworks?
    Crash it now!

    I hate delayed gratification.

  • Will these rocks bring mutated bacteria previously carried to Mars by NASA robots?

    BarraPunto the /. in Spanish

  • What would be really cool... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by arsaspe ( 539022 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:43AM (#2847466)
    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 [nineplanets.org] - 'Crashes' may be the wrong word!!, 'To be consumbed by' may be more appropiate!!
    • The site your link points to says "Jupiter probably has a core of rocky material amounting to something like 10 to 15 Earth-masses. Above the core lies the main bulk of the planet in the form of liquid metallic hydrogen."
      • However, the spacecraft will never ever make it to the core of Jupiter, because massive gravity, heat, and tidal forces will destroy it LONG before it gets deep enough to touch the core.

  • Amalthea (Score:3, Informative)

    by imrdkl ( 302224 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @07:09AM (#2847499) Homepage Journal
    Before its final plunge, Galileo will make the first close flyby of Amalthea, a small, inner moon of Jupiter, in November 2002.

    I found a fact sheet [nasa.gov] 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)

    • NASA landed NEAR on Eros [slashdot.org]

    • Phobos is one of Mars' moons.
      The other one is Deimos.

      Do you remember this from Doom?

    • Re:Amalthea (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @10:59AM (#2848274)
      > Before its final plunge, Galileo will make the first close flyby of Amalthea, a small, inner moon of Jupiter, in November 2002.

      Which is why I'm kinda pissed-off about the report of the camera shutdown (from the CNN article -- "The mission budget does not cover any further pictures") after the Io flyby.

      Does anyone know if CNN fscked up (perhaps by misinterpreting "we're shutting down the cameras until late 2002 because we're not flying near anything interesting for a while"), or if we've given up on imaging Amalthea altogether?

      (Or, is there simply not enough time to send back both the data from the Amalthea approach and get Amalthea images before Jupiter impact, in which case the data takes priority. Or is the radiation field around Amalthea so intense that we couldn't get pictures even if we tried? Any space geeks know what's really going on?)

    • Oh Phobos? So THAT explains the pink demons!!
  • They'd rather contaminate the much larger world of Jupiter instead, right?

  • Those damn Earthlings are at it again! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinistermidget ( 73363 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @07:55AM (#2847591)

    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

  • There was originally some sections of the data tape on the orbiter that had recorded some images never to be seen. JPL banned the use of that section of tape for fear of it breaking. I wonder if they will try and read those images back so we can see what we missed out on all those years ago. A PDF doc from JPL about the problems encountered on the trip to Jupiter, including the data tape can be found here [nasa.gov].
  • 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.

    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.

    • Subsurface life (Score:3, Informative)

      by wiredog ( 43288 )
      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 [washingtonpost.com].

  • My father grew up with one of the project managers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @08:23AM (#2847639) Journal
    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.

  • what's the reason for crashing these things? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AIV ( 548370 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @08:34AM (#2847656)
    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!"
    • IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist), but I don't think that Galilleo has enough fuel to attain escape velocity from the Jovian system. Therefore it would just keep on orbiting haphazardly until it crashed into something.
    • It is possible to throw Galileo out of the Jovian system, but its not possible to get enough energy to throw Galileo out of the solar system so it would just be floating around in interplanetary space uncontrolled and would be a hazard of impacting the Earth after a few million years... and since it has plutonium on board this is an undesirable option.

      Some early spacecraft are still functioning and broadcasting nuisance signals that make certain areas of the radio spectrum unusable, this combined with the possibility of spacecraft impacting Earth mean that all spacecraft must be properly disposed of before their fuel runs out and they are uncontrollable.
    • Because V-GER was a bitch.


      Those that do not learn from their past mistakes are doomed to repeat them, so now we properly dispose of our space trash.

  • What if life on earth began as bacterial "contamination" from an alien spacecraft. The thought just occured to me. Though I suppose it has been suggested many times life was created by aliens, it never occured it could have been an accident. Perhaps the first life in the universe we will find will be the evolution of contamination from one of our long range exploration probes.
  • 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 [ryerson.ca]

    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 [ryerson.ca]

    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. [ryerson.ca]

    Nasa: But..

    probe: goodby [ryerson.ca]

    Click.
    • 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!
  • 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.

  • No images on Amalthea flyby (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
  • 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.
  • Apollo 12 found bacteria on Surveyor 3 that survived two and a half years on the moon.

    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?

  • Apollo 12 found bacteria on Surveyor 3 that survived two and a half years on the moon.

    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.

  • So why is Jupiter an acceptable crash zone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kasreyn ( 233624 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2002 @06:53PM (#2851555) Homepage
    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

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