Venus closest approach: about 10,000 miles (16,000 km) above cloudtops, at 9:59 p.m. Previous trajectory correction maneuver: Dec. Communications with the spacecraft are maintained by the JPL-managed Deep Space Network, with tracking stations in California, Australia, and Spain. The atmospheric probe was managed by NASA Ames Research Center. JPL also designed and built the main part of the spacecraft, which will orbit Jupiter for about 22 months. The Galileo project was developed and is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications. This third planetary swingby will boost the spacecraft into an ellipse long enough to reach Jupiter in December 1995 to begin its two-year scientific study of the giant planet, including putting an atmospheric probe into the Jovian clouds. The Venus flyby geometry was designed to swing the spacecraft back to Earth on December 8, 1990, for a 600-mile flyby angled to put Galileo in a two-year elliptical orbit around the Sun, bringing it back again on December 8, 1992. ![]() This system could not give the spacecraft enough velocity to reach Jupiter directly, as originally designed thus the Venus-Earth-Earth swingby scheme was devised. Galileo was launched October 18, 1989, aboard space shuttle Atlantis an Inertial Upper Stage rocket boosted it out of Earth orbit toward Venus. Previous missions have raised new questions about the atmosphere's structure and behavior Galileo's instruments could provide some answers. Later this year, NASA's Magellan mission will orbit Venus for high-resolution global radar mapping. Radar systems (the only way to see through the atmosphere) have mapped much of the surface at gradually improving resolution. Venus has been observed from Earth with ever improving technology and by nearly 20 spacecraft operated by NASA and the Soviet space program, which have flown by, orbited and sent probes into the atmosphere and to the surface. A massive atmosphere topped by thick clouds blankets the surface, imposing a pressure about 100 times that at sea level here, as well as trapping the Sun's heat and raising the temperature above the melting point of lead. The nearest planet to Earth in space, Venus is also closest to our planet in size, with a diameter 5 percent smaller, and a mass almost 20 percent less than Earth. The Venus observations were selected by Galileo scientists and mission controllers at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the basis of (1) not risking Jupiter observations in the 1995-1997 Jovian orbital phase, (2) not exceeding the capacity of the tape, and (3) getting the best new scientific information about Venus. ![]() The scientific data will have to be stored on the spacecraft tape recorder until late October, when Galileo is close enough to Earth to play them back over its low-gain antenna. NASA's Galileo spacecraft will obtain its first gravity assist on the long road to Jupiter on the night of February 9-10 when it flies by the planet Venus at a distance of some 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) above the cloudtops.Īlthough the sole objective of this flyby is to pump up Galileo's orbit so that it can eventually reach Jupiter (two Earth flybys will also be required), scientists will use the opportunity to turn the spacecraft's planetary sensors on the cloud-shrouded planet, in order to study its atmosphere and environment.
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