With a jazz band playing in the background and more than a thousand glasses raised, Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers said goodbye to one of their own Sunday, toasting the veteran spacecraft Galileo as it performed a dramatic suicide plunge into the giant planet Jupiter.
With Galileo's gas tank empty after a 14-year space mission, NASA officials decided to destroy the spacecraft to prevent it from accidentally crashing into and contaminating any of Jupiter's moons.
"We haven't lost a spacecraft, we've gained a steppingstone into the future of space exploration,"
The stalwart craft had already outlasted its warranty by six years, but surprised its keepers to the end by refusing to go into "safe mode." It kept doggedly studying Jupiter until it was torn apart and vaporized at approximately noon Pacific time by the intense frictional forces and heat in Jupiter's violent atmosphere.
See spectacular mission images: Galileo's Legacy at Jupiter
Posted by feste at September 22, 2003 09:43 AM | TrackBack