Consider Galileo. Consider Earth.
As natural as it is that we dream about galaxies through the vision of Gene Roddenberry, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, last week’s arrival of the spacecraft Galileo into Jovian orbit reminds us of the mysteries in our own solar system that will elude us for generations. The probe that Galileo sent into the Jovian clouds is both a testament to our technological advance and how that advance is but a fleeting, easily vaporized wisp of a miracle.
Unlike “Star Trek,” where Scotty always finds some terrain to safely beam down a search party, Jupiter is a planet where what you see on top is all you get. Big and beautiful as that thing is, it is but a mass of hot gases. It has those stripes, the Great Red Spot, and no real solid surface. Just a lot of hydrogen and helium swirling around at 300 miles per hour. If you have any doubt as to the badness of this brew, the last time we let wind and hydrogen mix was the Hindenberg.
Into this, we sent the probe. Galileo had been in flight for six years. The probe’s lifespan was one hour. Some scientists have worked at least 35,000 hours over the last 18 years for the chance to see what would be transmitted in 60 minutes. Over the years, lots of things have gone wrong. A primary antenna failed, dramatically slowing data transmission. A failed tape recorder meant that Galileo passed within 1,000 kilometers of the volcanic Jovian moon Io without taking any pictures.
Other things have gone incredibly right. Galileo was in a perfect spot to watch comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 explode into Jupiter’s clouds. It took spectacular closeups of asteroids. When Galileo sent the first signals back that the probe successfully penetrated the atmosphere, you could understand why some of the scientists had wet eyes.
Give human beings some credit. We may be pitiful at reducing suffering on Earth, but give us the right algorithm and we can make metal go where no metal has gone before.
“I’m pretty amazed at the resiliency of our people,” said Neil Ausman, mission director for the Galileo project. “When things go wrong, they won’t go home. You have to throw them out of here. Even in the most trying periods, commitment to success drives them.”
Over the next three months, Galileo will slowly send the data from the probe back to Earth. “The results, said Galileo project manager William O’Neil, “will be much more stunning than anyone can imagine.” Ausman said, “I can’t imagine that there won’t be startling discoveries that rival anything we have before.”
No matter what the data says, we will still have to imagine. Despite NASA’s animation depicting the probe’s drop into orange clouds, there will never be a home video. We will be left in just as much wonder as to the actual event as we remain about how each brick was applied to the great pyramids or how the ancient tribes populated the earth.
Over the years, spacecraft have landed on Mars and given us the first pictures from its surface. Special readings of Venus have cut through its clouds to reveal valleys and mountain ranges. Men have landed on the moon. Women and men repair satellites in space. To that end, our children take for granted images at the local science museum that were just yesterday only a figment of H.G. Wells’ mind.
Jupiter is destined to remain a pretty face that we will always have to admire at a very safe distance. It is part planet, part unignited sun, with a volume that could swallow up 1,300 Earths, dust storms that kick outward 100 million miles and an atmospheric pressure that crushed and fried Galileo’s probe at the very top of its atmosphere.
Galileo project scientist Torrence Johnson said, “We have a new generation of electronics and a lot of shielding. But again, it’s the most hellish environment anybody ever tried to operate in.”
Galileo will explore Jupiter and its moons for the next two years. The data and photographs are sure to amaze us. They will also humble us with our own smallness and fragility. They should make us probe ourselves as to why so many tribes of the 20th century have let the one heaven we already have turn into hell. xxxx