"Eight minutes later, the orbiter started receiving data from the descent probe, which slammed into the top of the Jovian atmosphere at a comet-like speed of 170,000 kilometers per hour," NASA ...

By December 1995, Galileo was heading to Jupiter. It would buzz within 133,000 miles of the gas giant, a planet 318 times the size of Earth. The interior of Jupiter remains a mystery.

Galileo circled Jupiter 34 times. Over the years, its discoveries were so extraordinary, they even inspired an unusual tribute called "Galileo, The Emotional Life of a Spacecraft" in New York.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) – NASA’s aging Galileo spacecraft plunged into Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere yesterday, bringing a deliberately fiery conclusion to a 14-year, $1.5 billion exploration of the ...

Depiction of Galileo’s arrival at Jupiter in 1995. NASA. Now, 13 years after its launch, the mission is winding down. During several flybys of Io, ...

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system with 80 moons. Galileo was the first to discover the moons of Jupiter on this day in history, Jan. 7, 1610.

Source: NOVA: "Galileo's Battle for the Heavens" This resource was adapted from NOVA: "Galileo's Battle for the Heavens." In 1610, when Galileo first pointed his newly built telescope toward the ...

Galileo realized that since the moons of Jupiter obeyed Kepler's laws, they could serve as a kind of heavenly clock. A clock more precise than any human-made clock of the time.

On this date, Jan. 7, 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei, with a homemade telescope, noticed three points of light near Jupiter. Initially believing they were distant stars, Galileo’s repeated ...

On this date, Jan. 17, 2002, the Galileo probe made it’s 33 rd pass of Jupiter’s moon, Io.. After Voyager 1’s pass in 1979, Io was dubbed the most volcanically active place in the solar system.

On this date, Jan. 7, 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei, with a homemade telescope, noticed three points of light near Jupiter. Initially believing they were distant stars, Galileo’s repeated ...