Probe From Galileo Begins Odyssey Toward Jupiter

NASA’s successful release of a cone-shaped Jupiter probe moves the U.S. space program toward a landmark entry into the fifth planet’s gaseous outer layers at year’s end.

The Dec. 7 arrival will put the 34-inch high capsule where no human-made object has gone before - into the atmosphere of the distant planet.

Jupiter will be 560 million miles from Earth when the probe arrives at speeds exceeding 100,000 mph before slowing to a drift.

The separation of the 747-pound probe from the larger orbiter came Wednesday at 11:07 p.m. PDT as a crowd of more than 300 Galileo project workers and their families cheered at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Inside the control room, it was all thumbs-up signs and popping champagne corks as the last of three important technological confirmations of probe separation registered. Signals took 37 minutes to make their way back to Earth.

The technological triumph of the $1.6 billion project was welcome relief for NASA, which was embarrassed in 1991 when Galileo’s antenna failed to fully open. It also came at a time of threatened space program cuts and downsizing.

“It’s great that there’s going to be something positive happening for NASA,” said Louis D’Amario, the deputy navigation team chief responsible for putting the probe on its trajectory.

When the probe makes its 75-minute plunge through Jupiter’s dense clouds in December, it will relay information on chemical composition, winds, lightning and temperature. The three cloud layers are believed to consist of ammonia ice, ammonium hydrosulfide and a mixture of ice and water.

The unmanned Galileo orbiter was sent aloft aboard the space shuttle Atlantis in October 1989.