-
Essay / Galileo - 874
In the United States there is a program that deals with all science and technology related to space and airplanes, it is called NASA. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration and was founded in 1958. Since then, NASA has launched many different missions to help us expand our knowledge of our solar system. One of these missions was called Galileo, which aimed to collect more data about Jupiter and its surrounding moons. This spacecraft is named after Galileo Galileo, the first modern astronomer. In the 1970s, a few other spacecraft, such as Voyager 1 and 2 and Pioneer 10 and 11, explored Jupiter, but they were not able to stay for an extended period and the amount of information they brought back to Earth was limited. Scientists wanted a spacecraft that could stick around for an extended period of time and gather more detailed information about Jupiter's environment. This is how the idea of Galileo was born. On October 18, 1986, the space shuttle Atlantis, carrying Galileo, was launched. Shannon Lucid was the astronaut who performed the maneuvers that launched this spacecraft on its long journey. Unfortunately, the booster rocket that brought Galileo into interplanetary space did not have the power to send him directly to Jupiter. However, engineers have figured out how to borrow enough energy, using Newton's law of gravitation, from the gravity of other planets to achieve this. Galileo had to take “a circuitous route that took him through the inner solar system three times, receiving gravitational assistance from Venus and Earth” (McMillan 195). The path he took was dubbed “VEEGA: Venus-Earth-Earth Gravity Assist.” Galileo would be launched once from Venus and twice from Earth, gaining the necessary momentum to get to the middle of paper...... red future plans to put it into orbit and possibly send a lander. The radiation produced by Jupiter made it difficult for Galileo to get close to the inner moon and scientists thought it would be best to save that for last. The successful flybys led to the discovery of erupting lava fountains on Io. The next mission was called Galileo Millennium Mission and lasted until 2001. Europa and Io are the two main objectives of this mission, but studies were also carried out on the effect of Jupiter's radiation. had on board the spaceship. Unfortunately, Galileo began to run out of the fuel it needed to refine its orbit and keep its antenna pointing the right way toward Earth. Rather than risk losing control of the spacecraft and causing it to crash into the moon Europa and contaminate it, they decided to crash it into Jupiter's atmosphere in September 2017. 2003.