Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 18, 2024
The Galileo project was an American robotic space program that studied Jupiter and its moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and several other Solar System bodies. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Galileo spacecraft consisted of an orbiter and an atmospheric entry probe. It was launched in 1989 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. Despite suffering major antenna problems, Galileo achieved the first asteroid flyby, of 951 Gaspra, discovered the first asteroid moon, Dactyl, around 243 Ida, and observed Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9's collision with Jupiter. When it arrived at Jupiter in 1995, after gravity assist flybys of Venus and Earth, it became first spacecraft to orbit that planet. It then launched the first probe to directly measure Jupiter's atmosphere. In 2003, the mission was terminated by sending the orbiter into Jupiter's atmosphere to eliminate the possibility of contaminating the Jovian moons with terrestrial bacteria. (Full article...)