ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PASADENA, CALIF.
SOURCE: Associated Press
BOLDLY GOING where no probe had gone before, an intrepid data gatherer gave its all.
A 746-pound probe from the Galileo spacecraft entered the harsh, whirling gases of Jupiter's atmosphere Thursday and sent back 75 minutes of precious data before it disintegrated.
After receiving weather and chemical data from the probe, Galileo fired its thrusters to push the spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter for two years of study.
Cheers, handshakes and back-slapping broke out among NASA workers with the 3:15 p.m. confirmation that the probe was transmitting information to its mother ship.
``Fantastic!'' said Torrence Johnson, project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. ``Wow! You never really believe it till you see it.''
After slamming into the atmosphere at 106,000 mph, the giant, squat cone dropped more than 125 miles by parachute, sending data for 75 minutes before being crushed by air pressure 20 times greater than Earth's.
``We've never, never sampled a giant planet. We'll figure out what this atmosphere is made of over 600 million miles away,'' said Wesley T. Huntress, NASA associate administrator for space science.
Previous missions have analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Venus. Jupiter is different; the giant planet is surrounded by powerful magnetic fields and intense radiation and is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, elements in the primordial mix scientists believe condensed into our solar system.
Scientists monitoring the events on closed-circuit television burst into applause again after getting confirmation that Galileo had begun a 49-minute engine burn to send the spacecraft into orbit. ``We've done it! We've got confirmation,'' said Richard Terrile, a NASA scientist.
The orbits around Jupiter are expected to provide images of eight of the planet's 16 known moons.
By illuminating Jupiter's moons, as well as the planet's rings, its intense magnetic field and its swarms of dust and charged particles, the mission could give the best view ever of the planet's composition.
Up to now, the best glimpses of extraterrestrial bodies have come from the Hubble Space Telescope, whose mirror is less than 8 feet across.
``You would need a Hubble Space Telescope over 10 miles in diameter to get images of the moons as good,'' Johnson said. ``There's no substitute in this business for getting your instruments up close.''
Detailed data from the atmospheric encounter won't be available before mid-December.
Scientists speculated that after the probe passed through a high layer of ammonia crystal clouds, it would reach a stew of ammonia compounds swirling in hurricane winds up to 200 mph. After that, the probe would probably encounter heavy rain and lightning before being vaporized by the heat and pressure.
``The probe is ... recording some of the most important information from the solar system,'' Johnson said, calling the 75 minutes ``an extremely detailed weather report, the most important weather report we'll ever get.''
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. This is an artist's rendering of the last moments ofby CNBthe Galileo probe, as it plunges into Jupiter's vast, fatal
atmosphere.|