On Sept. 21, 2003, NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons came to an end.
After 14 years of exploration, the Galileo spacecraft intentionally fell into Jupiter and disintegrated in the planet's dense atmosphere. Galileo launched in 1989 from the payload bay of the space shuttle Atlantis and arrived at Jupiter in 1995. It was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and the first to send a probe into its atmosphere. It discovered evidence of saltwater below the surfaces of three of Jupiter's moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. It was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter because it was running out of fuel, and NASA wanted to make sure that it wouldn't impact any of Jupiter's moons that could harbor life in their subsurface oceans.
After 14 years of exploration, the Galileo spacecraft intentionally fell into Jupiter and disintegrated in the planet's dense atmosphere. Galileo launched in 1989 from the payload bay of the space shuttle Atlantis and arrived at Jupiter in 1995. It was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and the first to send a probe into its atmosphere. It discovered evidence of saltwater below the surfaces of three of Jupiter's moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. It was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter because it was running out of fuel, and NASA wanted to make sure that it wouldn't impact any of Jupiter's moons that could harbor life in their subsurface oceans.
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00:00On this day in space.
00:04In 2003, NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons came to an end.
00:08After 14 years of exploration, the Galileo spacecraft intentionally
00:12fell into Jupiter and disintegrated in the planet's dense atmosphere.
00:16Galileo launched in 1989 from the payload bay of the space shuttle Atlantis,
00:20and it arrived in Jupiter in 1995. It was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter
00:24and the first to send a probe into its atmosphere. It discovered evidence
00:28of salt water below the surfaces of three of Jupiter's moons, Europa, Ganymede,
00:32and Callisto. It was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter because it was
00:36running low on fuel, and NASA wanted to make sure that it wouldn't impact any of Jupiter's moons
00:40that could harbor life in their subsurface oceans. And that's what happened
00:44on this day in space.
00:48NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology