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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A prototype of a robot designed to explore subsurface oceans of icy moons is reflected in the water’s surface during a pool test at Caltech in September. Conducted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the testing showed the feasibility of a mission concept for a swarm of mini swimming robots.NASA/JPL-Caltech In a competition swimming pool, engineers tested prototypes for a futuristic mission concept: a swarm of underwater robots that could look for signs of life on ocean worlds.
When NASA’s Europa Clipper reaches its destination in 2030, the spacecraft will prepare to aim an array of powerful science instruments toward Jupiter’s moon Europa during 49 flybys, looking for signs that the ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust could sustain life. While the spacecraft, which launched Oct. 14, carries the most advanced science hardware NASA has ever sent to the outer solar system, teams are already developing the next generation of robotic concepts that could potentially plunge into the watery depths of Europa and other ocean worlds, taking the science even further.
This is where an ocean-exploration mission concept called SWIM comes in. Short for Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers, the project envisions a swarm of dozens of self-propelled, cellphone-size swimming robots that, once delivered to a subsurface ocean by an ice-melting cryobot, would zoom off, looking for chemical and temperature signals that could indicate life.
Dive into underwater robotics testing with NASA’s futuristic SWIM (Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers) concept for a swarm of miniature robots to explore subsurface oceans on icy worlds, and see a JPL team testing a prototype at a pool at Caltech in Pasadena, California, in September 2024. NASA/JPL-Caltech “People might ask, why is NASA developing an underwater robot for space exploration? It’s because there are places we want to go in the solar system to look for life, and we think life needs water. So we need robots that can explore those environments — autonomously, hundreds of millions of miles from home,” said Ethan Schaler, principal investigator for SWIM at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Under development at JPL, a series of prototypes for the SWIM concept recently braved the waters of a 25-yard (23-meter) competition swimming pool at Caltech in Pasadena for testing. The results were encouraging.
SWIM Practice
The SWIM team’s latest iteration is a 3D-printed plastic prototype that relies on low-cost, commercially made motors and electronics. Pushed along by two propellers, with four flaps for steering, the prototype demonstrated controlled maneuvering, the ability to stay on and correct its course, and a back-and-forth “lawnmower” exploration pattern. It managed all of this autonomously, without the team’s direct intervention. The robot even spelled out “J-P-L.”
Just in case the robot needed rescuing, it was attached to a fishing line, and an engineer toting a fishing rod trotted alongside the pool during each test. Nearby, a colleague reviewed the robot’s actions and sensor data on a laptop. The team completed more than 20 rounds of testing various prototypes at the pool and in a pair of tanks at JPL.
“It’s awesome to build a robot from scratch and see it successfully operate in a relevant environment,” Schaler said. “Underwater robots in general are very hard, and this is just the first in a series of designs we’d have to work through to prepare for a trip to an ocean world. But it’s proof that we can build these robots with the necessary capabilities and begin to understand what challenges they would face on a subsurface mission.”
Swarm Science
A model of the final envisioned SWIM robot, right, sits beside a capsule holding an ocean-composition sensor. The sensor was tested on an Alaskan glacier in July 2023 through a JPL-led project called ORCAA (Ocean Worlds Reconnaissance and Characterization of Astrobiological Analogs). The wedge-shaped prototype used in most of the pool tests was about 16.5 inches (42 centimeters) long, weighing 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms). As conceived for spaceflight, the robots would have dimensions about three times smaller — tiny compared to existing remotely operated and autonomous underwater scientific vehicles. The palm-size swimmers would feature miniaturized, purpose-built parts and employ a novel wireless underwater acoustic communication system for transmitting data and triangulating their positions.
Digital versions of these little robots got their own test, not in a pool but in a computer simulation. In an environment with the same pressure and gravity they would likely encounter on Europa, a virtual swarm of 5-inch-long (12-centimeter-long) robots repeatedly went looking for potential signs of life. The computer simulations helped determine the limits of the robots’ abilities to collect science data in an unknown environment, and they led to the development of algorithms that would enable the swarm to explore more efficiently.
The simulations also helped the team better understand how to maximize science return while accounting for tradeoffs between battery life (up to two hours), the volume of water the swimmers could explore (about 3 million cubic feet, or 86,000 cubic meters), and the number of robots in a single swarm (a dozen, sent in four to five waves).
In addition, a team of collaborators at Georgia Tech in Atlanta fabricated and tested an ocean composition sensor that would enable each robot to simultaneously measure temperature, pressure, acidity or alkalinity, conductivity, and chemical makeup. Just a few millimeters square, the chip is the first to combine all those sensors in one tiny package.
Of course, such an advanced concept would require several more years of work, among other things, to be ready for a possible future flight mission to an icy moon. In the meantime, Schaler imagines SWIM robots potentially being further developed to do science work right here at home: supporting oceanographic research or taking critical measurements underneath polar ice.
More About SWIM
Caltech manages JPL for NASA. JPL’s SWIM project was supported by Phase I and II funding from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program under the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program nurtures visionary ideas for space exploration and aerospace by funding early-stage studies to evaluate technologies that could transform future NASA missions. Researchers across U.S. government, industry, and academia can submit proposals.
How the SWIM concept was developed Learn about underwater robots for Antarctic climate science See NASA’s network of ready-to-roll mini-Moon rovers News Media Contact
Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-162
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Last Updated Nov 20, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s SPHEREx observatory undergoes integration and testing at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in April 2024. The space telescope will use a technique called spectroscopy across the entire sky, capturing the universe in more than 100 colors. BAE Systems The space telescope will detect over 100 colors from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies. Here’s what astronomers will do with all that color.
NASA’s SPHEREx mission won’t be the first space telescope to observe hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies when it launches no later than April 2025, but it will be the first to observe them in 102 colors. Although these colors aren’t visible to the human eye because they’re in the infrared range, scientists will use them to learn about topics that range from the physics that governed the universe less than a second after its birth to the origins of water on planets like Earth.
“We are the first mission to look at the whole sky in so many colors,” said SPHEREx Principal Investigator Jamie Bock, who is based jointly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, both in Southern California. “Whenever astronomers look at the sky in a new way, we can expect discoveries.”
Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will collect infrared light, which has wavelengths slightly longer than what the human eye can detect. The telescope will use a technique called spectroscopy to take the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies and separate it into individual colors, the way a prism transforms sunlight into a rainbow. This color breakdown can reveal various properties of an object, including its composition and its distance from Earth.
NASA’s SPHEREx mission will use spectroscopy — the splitting of light into its component wavelengths — to study the universe. Watch this video to learn more about spectroscopy. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Here are the three key science investigations SPHEREx will conduct with its colorful all-sky map.
Cosmic Origins
What human eyes perceive as colors are distinct wavelengths of light. The only difference between colors is the distance between the crests of the light wave. If a star or galaxy is moving, its light waves get stretched or compressed, changing the colors they appear to emit. (It’s the same with sound waves, which is why the pitch of an ambulance siren seems to go up as its approaches and lowers after it passes.) Astronomers can measure the degree to which light is stretched or compressed and use that to infer the distance to the object.
SPHEREx will apply this principle to map the position of hundreds of millions of galaxies in 3D. By doing so, scientists can study the physics of inflation, the event that caused the universe to expand by a trillion-trillion fold in less than a second after the big bang. This rapid expansion amplified small differences in the distribution of matter. Because these differences remain imprinted on the distribution of galaxies today, measuring how galaxies are distributed can tell scientists more about how inflation worked.
Galactic Origins
SPHEREx will also measure the collective glow created by all galaxies near and far — in other words, the total amount of light emitted by galaxies over cosmic history. Scientists have tried to estimate this total light output by observing individual galaxies and extrapolating to the trillions of galaxies in the universe. But these counts may leave out some faint or hidden light sources, such as galaxies too small or too distant for telescopes to easily detect.
With spectroscopy, SPHEREx can also show astronomers how the total light output has changed over time. For example, it may reveal that the universe’s earliest generations of galaxies produced more light than previously thought, either because they were more plentiful or bigger and brighter than current estimates suggest. Because light takes time to travel through space, we see distant objects as they were in the past. And, as light travels, the universe’s expansion stretches it, changing its wavelength and its color. Scientists can therefore use SPHEREx data to determine how far light has traveled and where in the universe’s history it was released.
Water’s Origins
SPHEREx will measure the abundance of frozen water, carbon dioxide, and other essential ingredients for life as we know it along more than 9 million unique directions across the Milky Way galaxy. This information will help scientists better understand how available these key molecules are to forming planets. Research indicates that most of the water in our galaxy is in the form of ice rather than gas, frozen to the surface of small dust grains. In dense clouds where stars form, these icy dust grains can become part of newly forming planets, with the potential to create oceans like the ones on Earth.
The mission’s colorful view will enable scientists to identify these materials, because chemical elements and molecules leave a unique signature in the colors they absorb and emit.
Big Picture
Many space telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and James Webb, can provide high-resolution, in-depth spectroscopy of individual objects or small sections of space. Other space telescopes, like NASA’s retired Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), were designed to take images of the whole sky. SPHEREx combines these abilities to apply spectroscopy to the entire sky.
By combining observations from telescopes that target specific parts of the sky with SPHEREx’s big-picture view, scientists will get a more complete — and more colorful — perspective of the universe.
More About SPHEREx
SPHEREx is managed by JPL for NASA’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions across the U.S. and in South Korea. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available.
For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/spherex/
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 31, 2024 Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Galaxies Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
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By NASA
Learn Home Europa Trek: NASA Offers a New… Europa Clipper Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 3 min read
Europa Trek: NASA Offers a New Guided Tour of Jupiter’s Ocean Moon
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is on its way to explore a moon of Jupiter that researchers believe may be one of the best places in the Solar System to search for life beyond Earth. While the spacecraft makes its more-than-five year journey to Europa, scientists, students, teachers, and the public can tour and explore the landforms of Europa with newly-released enhancements to NASA’s Europa Trek web portal.
One of the largest of Jupiter’s nearly 100 recognized moons, Europa is covered with a global ice cap. But beneath that crust of ice, researchers have found an ocean of liquid water, estimated to have about twice the volume of all of Earth’s oceans combined. This vast amount of liquid water is of particular interest to astrobiologists, scientists studying the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the Universe. Though Europa’s ocean remains hidden beneath its global crust of ice, we can get important clues about its nature by studying the remarkable landforms of Europa’s icy surface.
To accompany the launch of Europa Clipper, NASA’s Solar System Treks Project released exciting new enhancements to its online Europa Trek portal on September 30, 2024. The new additions to Europa Trek allow users to interactively fly over and explore high-resolution imagery of Europa’s surface from the Voyager, Galileo, and Juno missions. Users can also take a new guided tour of Europa’s amazing landforms, with commentary developed by a collaboration between NASA’s Astrobiology Science Communication Guild and NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute. The tour and its commentary introduce virtual explorers to the geology and possible biological significance of the diverse features of Europa’s surface.
“This is really fun. It’s cool how you can zoom into the high resolution data. I’ll spread the word about using this!” – Bob Pappalardo, Europa Clipper Project Scientist
The new tour and capabilities of Europa Trek were featured at the Europa Clipper public launch program at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center on October 6,2024, in advance of the October 14 launch of the mission. As part of the public program conducted by NASA’s Planetary Mission Program Office, the Europa Trek exhibit allowed hundreds of visitors to try their hands at flying over Europa and visualizing its exotic terrain.
NASA’s Solar System Treks is an infrastructure project within NASA’s Science Activation Team. Their online portals are used for mission planning, planetary science research, and Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) education. NASA’s Astrobiology Science Communication Guild is an international, community-based network of astrobiologists who engage in science communication with diverse audiences and learners. Watch for future collaborations between Solar System Treks and the Astrobiology Science Communication Guild at more locations across the Solar System!
Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
A stop along the guided tour of Europa landforms Share
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Last Updated Oct 23, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
On Oct. 18, 1989, space shuttle Atlantis took off on its fifth flight, STS-34, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Its five-person crew of Commander Donald E. Williams, Pilot Michael J. McCulley, and Mission Specialists Shannon W. Lucid, Franklin R. Chang-Díaz, and Ellen S. Baker flew a five-day mission that deployed the Galileo spacecraft, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, to study Jupiter. The astronauts deployed Galileo and its upper stage on their first day in space, sending the spacecraft on its six-year journey to the giant outer planet. Following its arrival at Jupiter in December 1995, Galileo deployed its atmospheric probe while the main spacecraft entered orbit around the planet, studying it in great detail for eight years.
Left: The STS-34 crew of Mission Specialists Shannon W. Lucid, sitting left, Franklin R. Chang-Díaz, and Ellen S. Baker; Commander Donald E. Williams, standing left, and Pilot Michael J. McCulley. Middle: The STS-34 crew patch. Right: The Galileo spacecraft in Atlantis’ payload bay in preparation for STS-34.
In November 1988, NASA announced Williams, McCulley, Lucid, Chang-Díaz, and Baker as the STS-34 crew for the flight planned for October 1989. Williams and Lucid, both from the Class of 1978, had each flown once before, on STS-51D in April 1985 and STS-51G in June 1985, respectively. Chang-Díaz, selected in 1980, had flown once before on STS-61C in January 1986, while for McCulley and Baker, both selected in 1984, STS-34 represented their first spaceflight. During their five-day mission, the astronauts planned to deploy Galileo and its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) on the first flight day. Following the Galileo deployment, the astronauts planned to conduct experiments in the middeck and the payload bay.
Left: Voyager 2 image of Jupiter. Middle: Galileo as it appeared in 1983. Right: Illustration of Galileo’s trajectory from Earth to Jupiter.
Following the successful Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions, NASA’s next step to study Jupiter in depth involved an ambitious orbiter and atmospheric entry probe. NASA first proposed the Jupiter Orbiter Probe mission in 1975, and Congress approved it in 1977 for a planned 1982 launch on the space shuttle. In 1978, NASA renamed the spacecraft Galileo after the 17th century Italian astronomer who turned his new telescope toward Jupiter and discovered its four largest moons. Delays in the shuttle program and changes in the upper stage to send Galileo from low Earth orbit on to Jupiter resulted in the slip of its launch to May 1986, when on Atlantis’ STS-61G mission, a Centaur upper stage would send the spacecraft toward Jupiter.
The January 1986 Challenger accident not only halted shuttle flights for 31 months but also canceled the Centaur as an upper stage for the orbiter. Remanifested onto the less powerful IUS, Galileo would require gravity assist maneuvers at Venus and twice at Earth to reach its destination, extending the transit time to six years. Galileo’s launch window extended from Oct. 12 to Nov. 21, 1989, dictated by planetary alignments required for the gravity assists. During the transit, Galileo had the opportunity to pass by two main belt asteroids, providing the first closeup study of this class of objects. Upon arrival at Jupiter, Galileo would release its probe to return data as it descended through Jupiter’s atmosphere while the main spacecraft would enter an elliptical orbit around the planet, from which it would conduct in depth studies for a minimum of 22 months.
Left: The Galileo atmospheric probe during preflight processing. Middle: The Galileo orbiter during preflight processing. Right: Space shuttle Atlantis arrives at Launch Pad 39B.
The Galileo atmospheric probe arrived at KSC on April 17 and the main spacecraft on May 16, following which workers joined the two together for preflight testing. Meanwhile, Atlantis returned to KSC on May 15, following the STS-30 mission that deployed the Magellan spacecraft to Venus. The next day workers towed it into the Orbiter Processing Facility to prepare it for STS-34. In KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), workers began stacking the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) on June 15, completing the activity on July 22, and then adding the External Tank (ET) on July 30. Atlantis rolled over to the VAB on Aug. 22 for mating with the ET and SRBs. Galileo, now mated to its IUS, transferred to Launch Pad 39B on Aug. 25, awaiting Atlantis’ arrival four days later.
The next day, workers placed Galileo into Atlantis’ payload bay and began preparations for the Oct. 12 launch. The Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test took place on Sept. 14-15, with the astronauts participating in the final few hours as on launch day. A faulty computer aboard the IUS threatened to delay the mission, but workers replaced it without impacting the planned launch date. The five-member astronaut crew arrived at KSC Oct. 9 for final preparations for the flight and teams began the countdown for launch. A main engine controller problem halted the countdown at T minus 19 hours. The work required to replace it pushed the launch date back to Oct. 17. On that day, the weather at the pad supported a launch, but clouds and rain at the Shuttle Landing Facility several miles away, and later rain at a Transatlantic (TAL) abort site, violated launch constraints, so managers called a 24-hour scrub. The next day, the weather cooperated at all sites, and other than a brief hold to reconfigure Atlantis’ computers from one TAL site to another, the countdown proceeded smoothly.
Left: STS-34 astronauts pose following their Sept. 6 preflight press conference. Middle: Liftoff of Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. Right: Controllers in the Firing Room watch Atlantis take to the skies.
Atlantis lifted off Launch Pad 39B at 12:53 p.m. EDT on Oct. 18. As soon as the shuttle cleared the launch tower, control shifted to the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Ascent Flight Director Ronald D. Dittemore and his team of controllers, including astronaut Frank L. Culbertson serving as the capsule communicator, or capcom, monitored all aspects of the launch. Following main engine cutoff, Atlantis and its crew had achieved orbit. Forty minutes later, a firing of the two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines circularized the orbit at 185 miles. The astronauts removed their bulky Launch and Entry Suits (LES) and prepared Atlantis for orbital operations, including opening the payload bay doors.
Left: Galileo and its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) in Atlantis’ payload bay, just before deployment. Middle: Galileo and its IUS moments after deployment. Right: Galileo departs from the shuttle.
Preparations for Galileo’s deployment began shortly thereafter. In Mission Control, Flight Director J. Milton Heflin and his team, including capcom Michael A. Baker, took over to assist the crew with deployment operations. The astronauts activated Galileo and the IUS, and ground teams began checking out their systems, with the first TV from the mission showing the spacecraft and its upper stage in the payload bay. Lucid raised Galileo’s tilt table first to 29 degrees, McCulley oriented Atlantis to the deployment attitude, then Lucid raised the tilt table to the deploy position of 58 degrees. With all systems operating normally, Mission Control gave the go for deploy.
Six hours and 20 minutes into the mission, Lucid deployed the Jupiter-bound spacecraft and its upper stage, weighing a combined 38,483 pounds. “Galileo is on its way to another world,” Williams called down. The combination glided over the shuttle’s crew compartment. Williams and McCulley fired the two OMS engines to move Atlantis a safe distance away from the IUS burn that took place one hour after deployment, sending Galileo on its circuitous journey through the inner solar system before finally heading to Jupiter. The primary task of the mission accomplished, the astronauts prepared for their first night’s sleep in space.
STS-34 crew Earth observation photographs. Left: The Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. Middle left: Jamaica. Middle right: Greece. Right: The greater Tokyo area with Mt. Fuji at upper left.
For the next three days, the STS-34 astronauts focused their attention on the middeck and payload bay experiments, as well as taking photographs of the Earth. Located in the payload bay, the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet experiment, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, measured ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere and compared the results with data obtained by weather satellites at the same locations. The comparisons served to calibrate the weather satellite instruments. Baker conducted the Growth Hormone Concentrations and Distributions in Plants experiment, that investigated the effect of the hormone Auxin in corn shoot tissue. Three days into the mission, she placed plant canisters into a freezer to arrest plant growth and for postflight analysis. Chang-Díaz and Lucid had prime responsibility for the Polymer Morphology experiment, developed by the 3M Company. They used a laptop to control experiment parameters as the hardware melted different samples to see the effects of weightlessness. Baker conducted several medical investigations, including studying blood vessels in the retina, changes in leg volume due to fluid shifts, and carotid blood flow.
Left: The Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet experiment in Atlantis’ payload bay. Middle: Ellen S. Baker, right, performs a carotid blood flow experiment on Franklin R. Chang-Díaz. Right: Chang-Díaz describes the Polymer Mixing experiment.
Left: The STS-34 crew poses on Atlantis’ fight deck. Middle: Atlantis touches down at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Right: The STS-34 astronauts pose in front of Atlantis.
On Oct. 23, the astronauts awakened for their final day in space. Because of high winds expected at the primary landing site at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), managers moved the landing up by two revolutions. In preparation for reentry, the astronauts donned their orange LESs and closed the payload bay doors. Williams and McCulley oriented Atlantis into the deorbit attitude, with the OMS engines facing in the direction of travel. Over the Indian Ocean, they fired the two engines for 2 minutes 48 seconds to bring the spacecraft out of orbit. They reoriented the orbiter to fly with its heat shield exposed to the direction of flight as it encountered Earth’s atmosphere at 419,000 feet. The buildup of ionized gases caused by the heat of reentry prevented communications for about 15 minutes but provided the astronauts a great light show. The entry profile differed slightly from the planned one because Atlantis needed to make up 500 miles of cross range since it returned two orbits early. After completing the Heading Alignment Circle turn, Williams aligned Atlantis with the runway, and McCulley lowered the landing gear. Atlantis touched down and rolled to a stop, ending a 4-day 23-hour 39-minute flight, having completed 79 orbits of the Earth. Following postlanding inspections, workers placed Atlantis atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified Boeing-747, and the combination left Edwards on Oct. 28. Following refueling stops at Biggs Army Airfield in Texas and Columbus AFB in Mississippi, Atlantis and the SCA arrived back at KSC on Oct. 29. Workers began to prepare it for its next flight, STS-36 in February 1990.
Left: An illustration of Galileo in orbit around Jupiter. Right: Galileo’s major mission events, including encounters with Jupiter’s moons during its eight-year orbital study.
One hour after deployment from Atlantis, the IUS ignited to send Galileo on its six-year journey to Jupiter, with the spacecraft flying free of the rocket stage 47 minutes later. The spacecraft’s circuitous path took it first to Venus on Feb. 10, 1990, back to Earth on Dec. 8, 1990, and again on Dec. 8, 1992, each time picking up velocity from the gravity assist to send it on to the giant planet. Along the way, Galileo also passed by and imaged the main belt asteroids Gaspra and Ida and observed the crash of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 onto Jupiter. On Dec. 7, 1995, the probe plummeted through Jupiter’s dense atmosphere, returning data along the way, until it succumbed to extreme pressures and temperatures. Meanwhile, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter and far exceeded its 22-month primary mission, finally plunging into the giant planet on Sept. 21, 2003, 14 years after leaving Earth. During its 35 orbits around Jupiter, it studied not only the planet but made close observations of many of its moons, especially its four largest ones, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io.
Left: Galileo image of could formations on Jupiter. Right: Closeup image of terrain on Europa.
Of particular interest to many scientists, Galileo made 11 close encounters with icy Europa, coming as close as 125 miles, revealing incredible details about its surface. Based on Galileo data, scientists now believe a vast ocean lies beneath Europa’s icy crust, and heating from inside the moon may produce conditions favorable for supporting life. NASA’s Europa Clipper, launched on Oct. 14, 2024, hopes to expand on Galileo’s observations when it reaches Jupiter in April 2030.
Enjoy the crew narrated video of the STS-34 mission. Read Williams‘ recollections of the STS-34 mission in his oral history with the JSC History Office.
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By NASA
SpaceX A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.
Europa Clipper is the first mission designed to conduct a detailed study of Jupiter’s moon Europa to determine if it currently has habitable conditions. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km) to reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of Europa.
Follow Europa Clipper’s journey in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System app.
Image credit: SpaceX
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