The Galileo Spacecraft was named after Galileo Galilei, who was an astronomer  . It was made by NASA to fly to Jupiter to study it and its moons. It was taken up into space by the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1989. The journey to Jupiter took it six years, when it reached the planet in December of 1995.  It made history when it became the first ever spacecraft to fly by an asteroid and to gain a permanent orbit around Jupiter. It even was able to send a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere. 

Galileo ended its job when it was programmed to enter Jupiter's atmosphere in September of 2003, after fourteen years in space.  

One of the important finds that Galileo found was that Jupiter's moon Europa may have a saltwater ocean beneath its icy surface.

Europa image taken by Galileo
courtesy of NASA

NASA  has other planned spacecraft missions to Jupiter. These include JUNO, which is to study Jupiter's magnetic field and atmosphere.  This is to be launched in 2010.  Other planned spacecraft that will go to other targets in space will make flybys of Jupiter. 

My resources:

Books:

"1001 Facts About Space" by Carole Stott and Clint Twist. Published by DK Publishing, 2002

"SpaceCraft - Mighty Machines" by Adam Hibbert. 
copyright 2001, Paragon Publishing, UK

Websites:

 NASA history:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo

The Nine Planets for Kids: http://kids.nineplanets.org/index.html
(maintained by Bill Arnett, Copyright Angela Finer)

Wikipedia - Galileo Spacecraft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_spacecraft

Back to Spacecraft page