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Europa Clipper is designed to follow up on evidence for a subsurface ocean underneath Europa's ice crust, found using the Galileo spacecraft which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Plans to send a spacecraft to Europa were initially conceived with projects such as Europa Orbiter and Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter , in which a spacecraft would be ...
The Galileo orbiter commenced an extended mission known as the Galileo Europa Mission (GEM), which ran until December 31, 1999. This was a low-cost mission, with a budget of $30 million (equivalent to $53 million in 2023). [ 168 ]
The focus of this extended mission was to follow up on the discoveries made at Europa with seven additional flybys to search for new evidence of a possible sub-surface water ocean. [21] Starting in May 1999, Galileo used four flybys (20 to 23) with Callisto to lower its periapse, setting up a chance for it to fly by Io twice in late 1999. [2]
The Galileo orbiter performed three radio occultation events of Europa, where the probe's radio contact with Earth was temporarily blocked by passing behind Europa. By analyzing the effects Europa's sparse atmosphere had on the radio signal just before and after the occultation, for a total of six events, a team of astronomers led by A. J ...
Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet. [4] The Jet Propulsion Laboratory built the Galileo spacecraft and managed the Galileo program for NASA. West Germany's Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm supplied the propulsion module.
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In 1605, Galileo had been employed as a mathematics tutor for Cosimo de' Medici. In 1609, Cosimo became Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany. Galileo, seeking patronage from his now-wealthy former student and his powerful family, used the discovery of Jupiter's moons to gain it. [6] On 13 February 1610, Galileo wrote to the Grand Duke's secretary:
A radio-science experiment analyzed Ganymede's gravitational field and internal structure. The instruments detected evidence of a self-generated magnetosphere around the moon. G2 260 (161) 6 September 1996 A Ganymede gravity-assist put Galileo into coplanar orbit with other Galilean satellites, permitting subsequent encounters with them. A ...