Launched in 1989 and looping through the jovian system since late1995, the voyage of NASA' Galileospacecraft will soon come to an end.The spacecraft has bee targeted to plungedirectl intoJupiter this Sunday, September 21st, at about 30 miles per second.Its components will be vaporized in thegas giant's outer atmosphere.While Galileo's long voyage of explorationhas resulted in a spectacula scientificlegacy,the spacecraft's ultimate fate is related to perhapsits mos tantalizingdiscovery -- strong evidence for liquid oceanbeneath the frozen surface of Jupiter' moonEuropa.Galileo is now almost completely out of fuel for maneuvers,so this intentional collision with Jupiter will preventany unintentional future collision with Europaand the possibility of contaminating the jovian moon withmicrobes from Eart hardy enough to survive in interplanetary space Colorimage data from the Galileo mission recorded between1995 and 1998 was used to create this depiction ofEuropa's cracked and icy surface The insetshows dark reddish, disrupted regions dubbed Thera and Thrace.
No comments:
Post a Comment