Day: December 7, 1997

Beating the odds imposed upon it by the unforgiving environment around the planet Jupiter and its major moons, and engineering challenges such as a high-gain antenna that never unfurled properly after its 1989 launch, NASA’s Galileo space probe completes its two-year mission. Since the spacecraft is still intact and reasonably healthy, NASA gains a two-year extension, which it calls the Galileo Europa Mission, focusing on the two innermost large moons, icy Europa and volcanic Io. Trajectories are planned to fly Galileo even closer to these moons than ever before, though the harsh radiation zone around Jupiter itself could fry Galileo’s main computer and end the mission at any time.