Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Since 1989, the camera on NASA’s Galileo spacecraft has captured a comet slamming into Jupiter, volcanoes erupting on one of its moons and the first known moon orbiting an asteroid.
On Thursday, the camera will snap its last pictures. Galileo will make its final flyby of one of Jupiter’s major moons when it sweeps within 62 miles of Io.
The mission budget does not cover any further pictures.
Galileo will continue making other scientific observations until September 2003, when the $1.4 billion spacecraft is expected to slam into Jupiter in a spectacular finale. But the 70 photographs to be transmitted to Earth over the next three months will be the last.
They will be a bittersweet reminder of a mission that was supposed to provide scientists — and the world — with motion picture-like images of Jupiter’s vibrant atmosphere. Because of computer glitches and other problems, Galileo never did produce the movie-quality images, but it still provided stunning and scientifically valuable pictures.
During 32 orbits of Jupiter, Galileo studied the planet-size moons Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io.
Among its discoveries was evidence of liquid oceans beneath the surfaces of Europa and Callisto that could harbor life. The spacecraft also kept tabs on some of the dozens of hot, active volcanoes on Io.
In all, Galileo has returned about 14,000 images to Earth.
The spacecraft was launched in 1989 from the space shuttle Atlantis and arrived in orbit around Jupiter six years later.
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