WASHINGTON, 24 September 2003 — NASA’s Galileo space probe made a controlled, fiery crash into Jupiter on Sunday, ending a 14-year mission that yielded dramatic discoveries about the largest planet and its moons.
The space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California received the final signal from the spacecraft at 3:43 p.m. EDT (1943 GMT), the laboratory said in a statement.
“We learned mind-boggling thing. This mission was worth its weight in gold,” said Galileo project manager Claudia Alexander.
More than 1,000 people who worked on the Galileo program gathered at the laboratory to celebrate the end of the mission.
Team member Rosaly Lopes described the farewell celebration as bittersweet. “It was very emotional. We had people coming here today who worked on Galileo many years ago. Some had retired. Some had left for other jobs and it was like a big family reunion,” she said.
Galileo was low on propellant and six years past its original end date. Launched from space shuttle Atlantis in 1989, Galileo traveled about 2.8 billion miles (4.6 billion km) before it disintegrated in Jupiter’s dense atmosphere on Sunday.
Galileo orbited Jupiter 34 times and obtained the first direct measurements of its atmosphere by sending a probe parachuting down toward the planet in 1995.
It detected evidence of underground salt water oceans beneath the icy crusts of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Data also showed that the moons Ganymede and Callisto may have a liquid saltwater layer.
Lopes called the Europa finding a major highlight of the mission.
“We had never thought of Europa as a place that could possibly harbor life, so that was a really major discovery,” she said.
The spacecraft was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter.