The Galileo probe arrived at Jupiter
On this day · 7 December 1995
After a six-year voyage, a NASA spacecraft fired its engine and slipped into history as Jupiter's first artificial moon.
On December 7, 1995, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft reached Jupiter and fired its main engine to brake into orbit, becoming the first spacecraft ever to circle the giant planet. Four earlier probes had merely flown past; Galileo stayed.
Its arrival day was frantic. While the orbiter swept through the Jovian system, it flew past the moons Io and Europa, and a small atmospheric probe it had released months earlier plunged into Jupiter’s clouds, radioing back the first direct readings of an outer planet’s atmosphere before being crushed by heat and pressure.
Six years and three planetary flybys after launch, Galileo settled into a 198-day first orbit.
Launched from the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1989, Galileo went on to circle Jupiter 35 times over nearly eight years, transforming our picture of the planet and its moons. The mission ended in 2003, when controllers deliberately steered the craft into Jupiter to protect the possibly life-bearing ocean moon Europa from contamination.
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