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Mission Websites

Here we list links to the primary mission website as well as pages about the mission on other sites such as the NSSDC, NASA portal, etc.

Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Europa

Galileo launched on 18 October 1989 and began orbiting Jupiter in December 1995. During the outbound trip, Galileo flew by the asteroids (951) Gaspra, in October 1991, and (253) Ida, in August 1993. Images from the latter flyby revealed that Ida was itself orbited by a tiny moon, subsequently named Dactyl. This was the first known case of a solar system small body with its own natural satellite. Galileo was also positioned to observe the far side of Jupiter in July 1994, when the fragments of comet D/Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted the planet. Once in orbit around Jupiter, Galileo dropped a probe to record the first direct observations of the Jovian atmosphere.

The original Galileo mission was extended into the Galileo Europa Mission, in which the spacecraft undertook an intensive study of the moon Europa, the Io plasma torus and Io itself. The mission ended on 21 September 2003, when the spacecraft descended into the Jovian atmosphere.

The SBN is the lead node for archiving Dust Detector System data for Galileo.

Instruments

Data Sets

Cruise & Jupiter Orbit

Ida/Dactyl & Gaspra Flybys

Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact at Jupiter

Other Target Observations

Galileo Data At Other PDS Nodes

Related Datasets

Use the Small Bodies Data Ferret to find other datasets for this mission/target.