Well, not Galileo Galilei's as you might have expected

It's been over 2 years since Galileo plunged into the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere. Those few last hours of real time data were supposed to be the closest measurements to Jupiter thus far (neglecting the atmospheric probe). As I recall, Galileo actually didn't go into safe mode as with so many other close passes so there's supposed to have been data collected all the way through the spacecraft's disappearance behind Jupiter's disk.

Were any surprises or interesting results found in the data collected? Any hints into irregularities of Jupiter's magnetic field or tantalizing stuff like that?

I think I heard somewhere that the very, last, final message received from Galileo was "HGA deployed"...



-the other Doug

Heheheh.. It wasn't really stuck, they just hadn't truly considered all the options. I like that idea.

iirc - Galileo actually entered the atmosphere out of visibility from Earth to the very last moments wouldnt have been visible.

Doug

That's true. But really, we're talking about a couple of minutes or so anyway. I'm not interested in what its very last transmission was, more if there was any good science performed on the way in. Revealing something that wasn't quite expected, of that sort...

Dvandorn: That was hilarious!

interesting stuff could have be occultation of Galileo last signal by the atmosphere, or the bottom end of the radiation belt. This could have be measured. Not expecting for close images of Jupiter, there was no time to transmit them, even with the HGA

I'm wondering how scientifically useful the radio occultation would be, seeing how the low gain antenna had a poor S/N ratio. I don't expect it could have probed very deep into the atmosphere. Also, is it even possible to have telemetry downlink at the same time as radio science tracking?
As for the images, none were planned nor taken as they couldn't be downloaded in time anyway. Besides, turning the camera on would greatly increase the chances of Galileo safing yet again, IMO...

I know that on approach, the star tracker spotted one of the little objects at the orbit of Amalthea that it spotted during the Amalthea flyby (which was especially significant in the real time, low rate mode it was working in.

What they were mainly after from the lowest-altitude measurements was more data on the precise configuration of the magnetic field. They got all the returned data they were after, but I haven't seen any published conclusions. (The one thing they didn't get that they'd hoped for was a 2-way tracking lock during the Amalthea flyby, which somewhat reduced the sensitivity of their gravity measurements -- they were still able to accurately estimate Amalthea's mass, but not its internal mass distribution.)

I recall hearing a statement to the effect that Galileo's signal was lost, I recall an impression of "abruptly", some time, maybe a half hour, before the expected time of L.O.S. due to occultation, possibly in the highest radiation dose-rate zone. But I've never seen any detailed report on "the final plunge"

Note that the probe got a measure of penetrating radiation after it turned on above the atmosphere out to a significant distance above the entry point.

Half an hour? That makes still a great distance. Perhaps the probe had a software failure due to radiation, or a DC/DC converter was knocked off, or other nasty radiation effect. If a probe could feel pain...

Uh.. confusion of spacecraft. The Galileo Entry Probe had a radiation counter that measured the high energy radiation that penetrated the heatshield and probe structure. I *think* they also used the ?coil? antenna for the lightning RF detector as a limited capability magnetometer, but I may be wrong.

I remember BIS had a cover for the event on their monthly magazine Spaceflight:
http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/Graphics/Sp...ght/L-Nov03.jpg

" I *think* they also used the ?coil? antenna for the lightning RF detector as a limited capability magnetometer, but I may be wrong."

I heard that too, but I've never seen any results.

Why a ?

I like to think that in it's final moments Galileo whispered "Cassini still survives".

"There is a..no..ther.......Sky.....walk......er.........."

Last Words: "It burns! It burns....."

"Oh my god - it's full of stars!"

Click to view attachment

I deduct that during Galileo's descending into the atmosphere must have undergone the following events: cooler and even cooler until aproaching very low Kevin temperature...100, 50, 30 kevin, lots of thunderstorms that is 1,000 times larger than Earth, lots of lighting, strong winds of over 1,000 kmph, breathed a fresh amonia clouds, and was subjected by very great atmosphere pressure of over than 2,200 mbars.

"It's not going to go on forever. Everything has to end.

It's going to be a sad day though.”

Andy Ingersoll Scientist


Then, due to the good lessons from Galileo, we will be back in the future.

Rodolfo

"That's no moon!"

"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."

Ahh... I remember that afternoon. I was holding vigil, and got a little misty when "Fairwell Galileo" popped up on the web site.

We will never know the final words. But we can be assured that Galileo spent the final seconds bravely facing forward into the onrushing, moonlit cloud deck. It's computer was booted, and it's camera shutter was open.

I thought the last thing it said was probably:

10001010101010010101010101010101010100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000...

Better than: 'I quite fancy one of Bellamy's meat pies'

Or: 'Bugger Bognor!'

Bob Shaw

It's even better than "I have a terrific headache!"

-the other Doug

And, oddly, at that exact moment, Cassini sent the message "Adams lives."

-the other Doug

"Either this psychedelic ammonia cloud-deck goes, or I do..."

Andy G

how about: Dave, Stop. Will you stop, Dave? My Mind is going, I can feel it.. I can feel it.....

Or... what Major Kong (Slim Pickins) said in his last scene in Dr. Strangelove:

Yee-haw! Yeeeeee-hawwwwwww!

et tu, NASA?

There is the possibility that Galileo was absorbed by Jupiter and its parts reconstituted to help it become a vast Jupiter Brain.

Don't think so? Look:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010201.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Brain

http://www.orionsarm.com/tech/archailect_architecture.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/...oshkaBrain.html

...beep...


...beep...

...Attention: JPL...

...what is my periapsis supposed to be this orbit?...

...beep...

...Hey, JPL!...

...beep...


...phtttzzz...

"Dr. Chandra, this does not appear to be a 1,000 day orbit back to Earth..."

Or one of the most haunting...

"Will I dream?"

-the other Doug

"growing brighter, brighter, blinding--"


tty

On the lines of that "I drank what?!" Socrates thing I see online, Galileo's last words:

"You want me to fly where?!"


Or maybe simply, "Weeeeeeee!!!!"

"Could it possibly be that I carried that high-gain antenna business too far?"

Then there was the silliness from He-whose-name-must-not-be-uttered-here that the RTG was compressed by Jupiter's atmosphere, and the plutonium went critical causing the appearance of a dark spot visible from Earth.

Galileo said "is that a floater?"

How do we know Galileo hit Jupiter, anyway? If the guys at JPL were using their ACME ™ MCO Altitude Calculator then maybe they got Imperial Cubits, qubits, quarks and lemons confubulated and it actually missed...

...maybe the close approach sprang the HGA, too, and it's been trying to contact us ever since, but the DSN electricity bill hasn't been paid!

Bob Shaw

Does anyone know what the total data volume returned by galileo actually was? I found the figure of 30 gigabytes on this page and added it to the wiki page. In this NPR interview on science friday, JPL scientist Rosalie Lopez clearly states "about 30 gigaBYTES". Revisiting this figure though, I VERY highly doubt this amount could have possibly have been returned at its ~160 bits/s rate throughout its entire life and I strongly suspect it was actually 30 gigaBITS. Can someone help confirm?

Well, it returned a lot of data at high rates during its Earth flybys. Also, in the 14,000 images, many are tiny subframe images that have been archived in the PDS in their proper place on the CCD, with black fill being used for the rest of the frame. In uncompressed formats, this is equivalent to a full frame in terms of volume. So this may be a little Enron-ish....