PAUL GEISSLER
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory
U. of Arizona

Talk:   Thu., 22 February
        Noon
        375 LeConte
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"Galileo: The Long Road to Jupiter"

ABSTRACT

The spacecraft Galileo was launched in 1989 from the shuttle Atlantis
and took 6 years to arrive at Jupiter following flybys of Venus, the
Earth, and two main-belt asteroids, Gaspra and Ida, the first such
small bodies to be imaged by a spacecraft. The mission was made up of
two components: a Jupiter Probe, which entered the atmosphere of the
giant planet and relayed the first direct measurements of its
composition, structure and dynamics, and an Orbiter equipped with four
remote sensing instruments sensitive to wavelengths from the
ultraviolet to the thermal infrared along with a battery of instruments
for monitoring the charged particles, waves and fields of Jupiter's
space environment. Galileo has provided important new insights about an
array of objects ranging from the smallest to the largest in the solar
system. In this talk I will outline several of the mission's
highlights, including a flyby of our own planet, a game of baseball on
a rapidly rotating asteroid, views of the violent volcanic activity on
Io, and the possibility of a subsurface sea on Europa.