Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms and abbreviations
- PART I Engineering issues specific to entry probes, landers or penetrators
- PART II Previous atmosphere/surface vehicles and their payloads
- PART III Case studies
- 21 Surveyor landers
- 22 Galileo probe
- 23 Huygens
- 24 Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner
- 25 Deep Space 2 Mars Microprobes
- 26 Rosetta lander Philae
- 27 Mars Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity
- Appendix Some key parameters for bodies in the Solar System
- Bibliography
- References
- Index
22 - Galileo probe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms and abbreviations
- PART I Engineering issues specific to entry probes, landers or penetrators
- PART II Previous atmosphere/surface vehicles and their payloads
- PART III Case studies
- 21 Surveyor landers
- 22 Galileo probe
- 23 Huygens
- 24 Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner
- 25 Deep Space 2 Mars Microprobes
- 26 Rosetta lander Philae
- 27 Mars Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity
- Appendix Some key parameters for bodies in the Solar System
- Bibliography
- References
- Index
Summary
The Galileo mission (e.g. O'Neill, 2002; Bienstock, 2004; Hunten et al., 1986) was conceived early in the 1970s. In 1975 initial work started at NASA Ames for a Jupiter orbiter and probe for launch in 1982 on the Space Shuttle, with Jupiter arrival in 1985 after a Mars flyby en route. The project was transferred to JPL, and was approved by Congress in 1977. Development difficulties with the Space Shuttle led to a slip, and over the following years political pressures from various NASA centres led to several redesigns and different upper stages. Eventually, Galileo was set for a May 1986 launch on the Shuttle with a powerful Centaur upper stage. The Challenger disaster, however, interrupted the Shuttle launch schedule, and a re-examination of safety considerations ruled out the Centaur upper stage with its volatile cryogenic propellants. The revised mission, with a two-stage inertial upper stage (IUS) solid propellant upper stage would launch (after yet more delays) on October 18, 1989.
The low energy of the launcher then required Galileo to make one Venus and two Earth flybys to reach Jupiter. Although this trajectory afforded two asteroid flybys, the thermal design reworking needed to protect the spacecraft in the inner solar system led inadvertently to the failure of the high-gain antenna deployment mechanism, which drastically reduced the downlink performance during the scientific mission.
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- Information
- Planetary Landers and Entry Probes , pp. 267 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007