What is the Galileo Spacecraft?
The Galileo spacecraft, also known as the Galileo orbiter, was an unmanned space probe sent to study Jupiter and its moons. Galileo is named after Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer and Renaissance man who used one of the first telescopes to observe moons orbiting Jupiter. A NASA mission, Galileo was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Galileo was powered by two radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which powered the spacecraft through the radioactive decay of plutonium-238. Galileo was launched on 18 October 1989 as a payload on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It made several gravity assist fly-bys of Venus and Earth before launching off in the direction of Jupiter. In 1993, it discovered the first asteroid moon, Dactyl, orbiting the asteroid Ida. Planetary scientists had suspected the existence of asteroid moons prior to this but never had observed any. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on 7 December 1995. It was the first craft to orbit Jupiter rather than just perform a fly-b
