Galileo

Spacecraft Galileo left Earth for Jupiter in 1989, launched by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. This began its six-year journey to Jupiter. Galileo used Venus' and Earth's gravity and the speed of its orbit to get swung around toward Earth and go a little faster.

Galileo's greatest challenge was when the big antenna wouldn't open all the way so the data and pictures that it gathered on Jupiter or on its way couldn't be sent to Earth and the smaller antenna only sent a weak signal.

Scientists tried everything but that antenna just wouldn't open. They tried to send Galileo toward the sun hoping that the heat would make the metal expand but the antenna wouldn't open. They tried turning Galileo the other way opposite the sun and thinking that the coldness would shrink the pins holding the antenna in. But nothing seemed to work.

If they wanted those pictures and data there was only one thing to do: create more software and send it to Galileo so its small antenna would give the information that they wanted. And so that's exactly what they did.

Surprisingly, the information came back much faster than anyone thought possible. The Deep Space Network helped by using three balanced points around the world which were Goldstone, California; Canberra, Australia and Madrid, Spain to work together with nearby antennae to get all that they could from the signal of Galileo's small antenna.

Galileo zoomed around Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, three of Jupiter's four moons. Galileo the spacecraft took pictures of Europa to find out what is beneath its icy surfaces. After that, it also took pictures of Io.

Galileo is supposed to take lots of pictures of Jupiter and its moons. Galileo also took pictures of the other planets and moons it went to.