The Galileo Missions plan was to fly a satellite directly to Jupiter and gather Intel on it and a few of its moons. After new problems were placed on shuttle operations after the Challenger accident and the Centaur program was cancelled, Centaur was a new booster to lift heavy payloads by using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuel. They fixed this problem, however by using Earths & Venuses gravity to "slingshot" the craft to Jupiter.
During the flybys of the earth, Galileo was able to get pictures of the moon. Finally on July 1995, the Galileo probe was released and began its long lonely flight to Jupiter. Five months later, the probe sliced into Jupiter's atmosphere at one-hundred-six-thousand miles per hour. It slowed, released its parachute, and drop its heat shield. As the probe descended through ninety-five miles of the top layers of the atmosphere, it collected fifty-eight minutes of data on the local weather. The data was sent to the spacecraft overhead, then transmitted back to earth. On September 29 2003, Galileo commit suicide by flying into Jupiter's crushing gravity to not risk contamination of the new found ocean under the icy surface of Europa.
Here is a complete timeline of the mission.
| Time | Event | |
| 1989-10-18 | Launch on Space Shuttle Atlantis | |
| 1990-02-10 | Venus Flyby (16,000 km) | |
| 1991-04-11 | High gain antenna fails to open properly | |
| 1991-10-08 | Earth Flyby 1 (960 km) | |
| 1991-10-29 | Asteroid Gaspra Flyby (1,600 km) | |
| 1992-12-08 | Earth Flyby 2 (305 km) | |
| 1993-08-28 | Flyby of Ida and its moon Dactyl (2,400 km) | |
| 1994-07-16 | Direct observation of comet S/L-9 Jupiter Impact. | |
| 1995-07-13 05:15 | Jupiter Probe separation | |
| 1995-07-27 06:45 | Trajectory correction maneuvre (orbiter deflection) - on target for orbit insertion | |
| 1995-11-19 | Jupiter Bow Shock Crossing | |
| 1995-12-07 13:09 | Closest approach to Europa during Jupiter orbit insertion (30,951 km) | |
| 1995-12-07 17:45 | Closest approach to Io during Jupiter orbit insertion, used as a gravity-assist (892 km) | |
| 1995-12-07 21:53 | Jupiter Orbit Insertion: closest approach to Jupiter (214,569 km) | |
| 1995-12-07 22:04 | Probe enters Jupiter atmosphere | |
| 1995-12-07 22:22 | 49 minute Jupiter Orbit Insertion burn starts | |
| 1995-12-08 00:27 | Jupiter Orbit Insertion engine firing for 49 minutes | |
| 1996-03-14 | Apojove maneuvre | |
| 1996-03-14 19:15 | Perijovie raise maneuvre | |
| 1996-06-27 06:29 | (1) Ganymede Flyby (835 km) | |
| 1996-06-28 00:31 | Perijovie (11.0 RJ) | |
| 1996-09-06 19:00 | (2) Ganymede Flyby (262 km) | |
| 1996-11-04 13:34 | (3) Callisto Flyby (1,100 km) | |
| 1996-12-19 06:53 | (4) Europa Flyby (695 km) | |
| 1997-02-20 17:03 | (6) Europa Flyby (588 km) | |
| 1997-04-05 07:10 | (7) Ganymede Flyby (3,065 km) | |
| 1997-05-07 15:57 | (8) Ganymede Flyby (1,584 km) | |
| 1997-06-25 13:48 | (9) Callisto Flyby (416 km) | |
| 1997-09-17 00:19 | (10) Callisto Flyby (524 km) | |
| 1997-11-06 20:23 | (11) Europa Flyby (1,119 km) | |
| 1998-02-10 | (13) Europa Flyby | |
| 1998-03-29 13:21 | (14) Europa Flyby (1,645 km) | |
| 1998-05-31 | (15) Europa Flyby | |
| 1998-07-21 | (16) Europa Flyby | |
| 1998-09-26 | (17) Europa Flyby | |
| 1998-11-22 | (18) Europa Flyby | |
| 1999-02-01 | (19) Europa Flyby | |
| 1999-05-05 | (20) Callisto Flyby | |
| 1999-06-30 | (21) Callisto Flyby | |
| 1999-08-14 | (22) Callisto Flyby | |
| 1999-09-16 | (23) Callisto Flyby | |
| 1999-10-11 | (24) Io Flyby | |
| 1999-11-26 | (25) Io Flyby | |
| 2001-01-04 | Closest approach to the Cassini spacecraft (4,500,000 km) | |
| 2002-11-05 | Amalthea Flyby. Last flyby at a Jupiter moon for Galileo (159 km) | |
| 2003-09-21 05 | Passes Ganymede orbit for the last time | |
| 2003-09-21 12 | Passes Europe orbit for the last time | |
| 2003-09-21 15:20 | Passes Io orbit for the last time | |
| 2003-09-21 18:57 | Deliberate impact into Jupiter atmosphere | |
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