Galileo Figaro Magnifico
38 hours, 16 minutes and counting until the Galileo space probe goes screaming into the Jovian atmosphere at 108,000 miles per hour.
Galileo mission recap:
2.9 Billion miles traveled
First spacecraft to rendezvous with an asteroid
First glimpse of a tiny “moon” orbiting an asteroid
Sent home dynamite pictures of the Shoemaker-Levy impacts
Detected a salt water ocean under the moon Europa
Now, in order to keep from accidentally contaminating a moon (like Europa) with any stowaway Earth germs, NASA/JPL has flung the craft on a collision course with a planet so massive that its core is believed to contain metallic liquid hydrogen.
So long, Galileo. Now, it’s on to Saturn with the Cassini-Huygens probe. And if you thought the Europa fly-by was cool, just wait until we land on Titan!