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Artist's impression of Galileo ' s arrival at Jupiter
The Galileo project was an American robotic space program that studied Jupiter and its moons (including Io , Europa , Ganymede and Callisto ), as well as several other Solar System bodies. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei , the Galileo spacecraft consisted of an orbiter and an atmospheric entry probe. It was launched in 1989 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. Despite suffering major antenna problems, Galileo achieved the first asteroid flyby (of 951 Gaspra ), discovered the first asteroid moon (Dactyl , around 243 Ida ), and observed Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 's collision with Jupiter. After gravity-assisted flybys of Venus and Earth , Galileo became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. It then launched the first probe to directly measure Jupiter's atmosphere . In 2003, the mission was terminated by sending the orbiter into Jupiter's atmosphere to eliminate the possibility of contaminating the Jovian moons with terrestrial bacteria. (Full article... )
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