Mission Jupiter : The Spectacular Journey of the Galileo Spacecraft
Jupiter is one of the brightest planets in our night sky, and by far the largest in the Solar System. What the Romans called “Father of the Sky” is huge — its diameter is more than ten times Earth’s, and its mass is well over twice the total of all the rest of the planets in the Solar System. Yet in spite of its staggering size, its position relatively close to us, and its prominent place in our myths and imagination, Jupiter has remained one of the most enigmatic of our planetary neighbors. Does this gas giant have a solid surface? What drives its Great Red Spot — a huge swirling storm hundreds of years old and tens of thousands of miles across? Was there ever a possibility of microbial life on its watery moon Europa? What are we to make of the active volcanoes on the moon Io? And what is the nature of Jupiter’s extraordinary magnetosphere?
This book tells the story of the Galileo space probe and the astonishing things it has told us about Jupiter — and the new questions it has raised in the course of its mission, which has lasted well over a decade. The tiny spacecraft, which has spent more than five years orbiting the planet, is arguably the most successful NASA space vehicle since Apollo 11. It has survived political indifference, legal challenges, software glitches, a balky high-gain antenna, and, with some damage, intense radiation bombardment — and it is still flying, still sending us extraordinary treasures of data from Jupiter and its moons.
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