Master Index

General Spacecraft Anatomy

• How much does the spacecraft weigh?
• Where is the spacecraft's camera located?
• Why is the spacecraft wrapped in black and gold stuff?
• Since Galileo's insulation is very effective, why don't they use it in houses?
• What is the long boom for?
• How did the spacecraft fit inside the shuttle bay?
• Why does Galileo spin?

General Questions

• What spinoff technology has Galileo produced?
• What limits the Galileo orbiter's useful lifetime? Will the orbiter be dragged into Jupiter's atmosphere, thus ending the mission?
• What is the cost of the Galileo mission?
• Are the Deep Space Network hardware and software changes being made for Galileo usable by other projects?
• What don't we know about Jupiter that is important to learn and which Galileo will help provide an answer?
• Do scientists known much about Jupiter or is there still a great deal of mystery? If so, what?
• What is unique about the Galileo mission?
• How will learning about Jupiter help scientists understand Earth? The Solar System?
• What are the most fascinating aspects of Jupiter compared to other planets?
• How would you describe what has been learned to-date about Jupiter compared to what scientists hope to learn from the Galileo mission?
• What can be learned by orbiting the gaseous planet that could not be gained by the earlier flybys?
• What new technology, if any, had to be developed for the spacecraft?
• If Jupiter has no solid ground to land on and is only a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen, why doesn't it just drift apart?
• I'm an amateur astronomer, and I'd like to use my radio telescope to track Galileo. What frequency should I be looking at?
• What's a gravity assist?
• What will Galileo do (or where will it go) after the two year mission is over? Will its power run out at that point?

The Probe

• Where did the Probe fit?
• How fast was the Probe going when it enters Jupiter's atmosphere?
• What science the Probe instruments return?
• Once the Probe separated, what woke it up many months later just before entry?
• Did the Probe see Jupiter's surface?
• Why didn't we taking an image of the Probe?

Navigation

• How fast is Galileo travelling? How far is it from Earth? From Jupiter?
• How does the spacecraft orient itself?
• Why does Galileo's speed change? Why doesn't it stay constant?
• What are the orbital elements for the spacecraft?
• I see that the Orbit Deflection Maneuver is also called Trajectory Change Maneuver (TCM) 25. Does this mean that it was the 25th TCM performed since launch?
• Can the probe be retargetted to the SL-9 impact points?
• Shouldn't Galileo's speed be increasing as the orbiter nears Jupiter?
• I've heard a lot about how Galileo's flybys of Venus and Earth (twice) increased the spacecraft's speed enough to allow it to get out to Jupiter. How much faster did Galileo have to go to get to Jupiter (once it was deployed out of the shuttle), and how much of that speed increase came from all the planetary flybys?
• What is the Perijove Raise Maneuver?
• What qualifications would I need to work on the navigation and flight dynamics team?

Galileo's Antennas

• What's the high-gain antenna?
• Why didn't the antenna open all the way up? Is JPL still trying to open it?
• Why not send a satellite to Jupiter to relay a signal from Galileo back to Earth?
• Is that big black thing at the top of the spacecraft a mirror for the antenna?
• What is the low-gain antenna, and where is it located?
• When Jupiter is on the other side of the Sun, how does that affect data transmission?
• Will the data rate using the low-gain antenna get any higher than 10 bits per second? How will Galileo's data rate be affected by the distance between Earth and the spacecraft, or by changes in the spacecraft's flight software?
• Without the HGA, how long does it take to return a single image?
• The Telecommunications Strategy Fact Sheet says that there will be performance-enhancing capabilities added at the Canberra Deep Space Network 70-m antenna. Why aren't ultracones (which significantly lower the system noise, and hence boost the performance by roughly 20-25%) being installed at the Goldstone and Madrid sites as well?
• If the stuck HGA ribs were to come free, could the HGA be immediately used? How would we know that they had come free?
• Are the Deep Space Network hardware and software changes being made for Galileo usable by other projects?
• Why weren't the new data compression methods originally planned to be used with the High Gain Antenna to get even more data back?
• What is the power of the radio signal transmitted from Galileo, and what power does it have when it reaches the DSN antennas on earth?

Galileo's Computers

• How does the Galileo spacecraft's software work? What language was the software written in?
• Where can I find Galileo's code listings?
• Why does Galileo store imaging and other science data on the spacecraft prior to sending it back to Earth?
• How much data is really lost when "lossy" compression is used?
• Why weren't the new data compression methods originally planned to be used with the High Gain Antenna to get even more data back?

Power

• How is the spacecraft powered?
  
• What type of fuel do Galileo's engines use?
  
• Why do we have to use plutonium? Why not use solar panels?

Imaging Science

• Of what scientific value are the pictures that are sent back from Galileo?
  
• Why does Galileo store imaging and other science data on the spacecraft prior to sending it back to Earth?
• How big is an SSI image?
• Without the HGA, how long does it take to return a single image?
• How much data is really lost when "lossy" compression is used?
• When will Galileo surpass Hubble's imaging capabilities?

Sources for Pictures

• Where can I get pictures from the Spacecraft? Can I get images on CD?
  
• I'm a teacher who needs pictures for my classroom.
  
• How can I watch Galileo press conferences?
  
• Where can I get pictures of Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacting Jupiter?
• When can I see images from the Probe's plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere?

Tape Recorder

• What is the capacity of the tape recorder on Galileo?
• Why did the tape recorder rewind for 15 hours?
• Why was it now not possible to photograph Io and Europa on December 7, as planned?

Arrival Day (December 7, 1995)

• Why is it now not possible to photograph Io and Europa on December 7, as planned?
• What data can we expect to see on December 7, when the spacecraft arrives at Jupiter?
• Will there be any images released prior to Dec. 7?
• When can I see images from the Probe's plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere?
• Will Earthbound observers be able to see the "flash" from the Probe's entry?

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