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CNN Live Sunday
Galileo Cashes Into Jupiter After Years Of Service
Aired September 21, 2003 - 16:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A 14-year mission in space is coming to a spectacular close today on the planet Jupiter. The Galileo spacecraft is making a dramatic death dive, crashing into the planet on purpose. CNN's Frank Buckley is at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California. Hi, Frank.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Carol. And for all of us who grew up as part of a generation that associates the phrase "The eagle has landed" with space flight, maybe the new generation will remember this day as the day that Galileo crashed.
And in fact, it's something that they're quite happy with here at JPL. They intentionally crashed this spacecraft into a planet, and they expected it to. It went hurtling into Jupiter at 108,000 miles per hour. To give you some perspective, that's like traveling between L.A. and New York in 82 seconds.
Here at JPL it's a party atmosphere. People here are celebrating their life's work. They worked on this mission beginning with the planning in 1976. It's a party here at JPL for a mission that took to space in 1989.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three, two, one. We have ignition and lift-off of Atlantis and the Galileo spacecraft bound for Jupiter.
BUCKLEY: Galileo eventually got to Jupiter, giving us incredible images and spectacular science along the way.
COLLEEN HARTMEN, NASA: Lightning on venus was discovered in the atmosphere. Unprecedented close-ups of asteroids. As I'm sure you know, we found that there was a moon orbiting around an asteroid. First time ever that was suspected. Once again, the planets and the contents in our solar system rewrote our history books for us in an encounter of an afternoon. Totally unexpected. Even the views of earth were very fascinating.
BUCKLEY: But scientists say Galileo was a problem child. The antenna that was supposed to beam back a pipeline of data never opened. And a small backup antenna could only spit out a soda straw's worth of information. But JPL and NASA scientists had a chat with their troubled kid as it sailed through space and reprogrammed Galileo.
ED WEILER, NASA: And they found a way even with that soda straw to open the soda straw a little bit more and to pump more water through that soda straw, and eventually we got every bit of science we ever hoped to from Galileo.
BUCKLEY: It discovered strong evidence of liquid salt water oceans on three of Jupiter's moons.
WEILER: On the Earth, where there's water there's life. And when you find liquid water outside of the Earth's environment you have to ask the question, could there be, is it possible?
BUCKLEY: Galileo will never know, because the scientists and engineers who kept it going are intentionally crashing the spacecraft into the planet it orbited 34 times to make sure Galileo doesn't contaminate any of those moons when it runs out of gas. And for the men and women who spent the better part of their professional lives working on Galileo, it is a bittersweet day.
CLAUDIA ALEXANDER, GALILEO SCIENTIST: For decades the flight team has poured an extraordinary amount of dedication into keeping this thing going. And to a certain extent, it's almost like having a troubled child that ends up graduating from law school. Okay, you're so happy that it had these -- that it was able to overcome the difficulties and do a fabulous return. And I think that's what's going to be on people's mind.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BUCKLEY: And the folks here at JPL tell me that about an hour ago Galileo did in fact crash into Jupiter. They are still awaiting the last bits of data. It takes about an hour for the last information to arrive here on Earth, even traveling at the great speeds that the information travels. It won't get here for an hour later.
So pretty soon the last bits of data will be trickling in, and that will be the end. They're already celebrating the end here at JPL of an incredibly successful mission from their point of view. You can hear the party going on behind me. In about half an hour they're actually going to be raising their glasses in a toast -- Carol.
LIN: All right. Have fun Frank. Thanks so much for that report.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired September 21, 2003 - 16:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A 14-year mission in space is coming to a spectacular close today on the planet Jupiter. The Galileo spacecraft is making a dramatic death dive, crashing into the planet on purpose. CNN's Frank Buckley is at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California. Hi, Frank.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Carol. And for all of us who grew up as part of a generation that associates the phrase "The eagle has landed" with space flight, maybe the new generation will remember this day as the day that Galileo crashed.
And in fact, it's something that they're quite happy with here at JPL. They intentionally crashed this spacecraft into a planet, and they expected it to. It went hurtling into Jupiter at 108,000 miles per hour. To give you some perspective, that's like traveling between L.A. and New York in 82 seconds.
Here at JPL it's a party atmosphere. People here are celebrating their life's work. They worked on this mission beginning with the planning in 1976. It's a party here at JPL for a mission that took to space in 1989.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three, two, one. We have ignition and lift-off of Atlantis and the Galileo spacecraft bound for Jupiter.
BUCKLEY: Galileo eventually got to Jupiter, giving us incredible images and spectacular science along the way.
COLLEEN HARTMEN, NASA: Lightning on venus was discovered in the atmosphere. Unprecedented close-ups of asteroids. As I'm sure you know, we found that there was a moon orbiting around an asteroid. First time ever that was suspected. Once again, the planets and the contents in our solar system rewrote our history books for us in an encounter of an afternoon. Totally unexpected. Even the views of earth were very fascinating.
BUCKLEY: But scientists say Galileo was a problem child. The antenna that was supposed to beam back a pipeline of data never opened. And a small backup antenna could only spit out a soda straw's worth of information. But JPL and NASA scientists had a chat with their troubled kid as it sailed through space and reprogrammed Galileo.
ED WEILER, NASA: And they found a way even with that soda straw to open the soda straw a little bit more and to pump more water through that soda straw, and eventually we got every bit of science we ever hoped to from Galileo.
BUCKLEY: It discovered strong evidence of liquid salt water oceans on three of Jupiter's moons.
WEILER: On the Earth, where there's water there's life. And when you find liquid water outside of the Earth's environment you have to ask the question, could there be, is it possible?
BUCKLEY: Galileo will never know, because the scientists and engineers who kept it going are intentionally crashing the spacecraft into the planet it orbited 34 times to make sure Galileo doesn't contaminate any of those moons when it runs out of gas. And for the men and women who spent the better part of their professional lives working on Galileo, it is a bittersweet day.
CLAUDIA ALEXANDER, GALILEO SCIENTIST: For decades the flight team has poured an extraordinary amount of dedication into keeping this thing going. And to a certain extent, it's almost like having a troubled child that ends up graduating from law school. Okay, you're so happy that it had these -- that it was able to overcome the difficulties and do a fabulous return. And I think that's what's going to be on people's mind.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BUCKLEY: And the folks here at JPL tell me that about an hour ago Galileo did in fact crash into Jupiter. They are still awaiting the last bits of data. It takes about an hour for the last information to arrive here on Earth, even traveling at the great speeds that the information travels. It won't get here for an hour later.
So pretty soon the last bits of data will be trickling in, and that will be the end. They're already celebrating the end here at JPL of an incredibly successful mission from their point of view. You can hear the party going on behind me. In about half an hour they're actually going to be raising their glasses in a toast -- Carol.
LIN: All right. Have fun Frank. Thanks so much for that report.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
