From: NewsProfiles@aol.net
Date: 95-12-01 20:54:04 EST


PASADENA, Calif (Reuter) - More than six years after blasting off from Earth on the shuttle Atlantis, the Galileo craft has entered Jupiter's environment where it will soon begin a closeup study of the solar system's largest planet, space scientists said Friday.

The spacecraft, which is nearly 600 million miles from Earth, this week crossed the boundary from interplanetary space into the giant magnetic cocoon around Jupiter called the magnetosphere, they said.

Since leaving the Earth on Atlantis in August 1989, Galileo has survived a series of technical glitches and an interplanetary dust storm.

``With the spacecraft now in the magnetosphere, we begin our first direct measurements of the Jupiter system,'' said Galileo Project Manager William O'Neil at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory here.

Data from Galileo confirmed the craft passed the milestone on Nov26 at a distance of about six million miles from Jupiter's cloud tops, the JPL said in a statement.

Galileo, named after the Italian astronomer who discovered Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610, is less than a week away from taking up permanent residence around Jupiter to carry out 16 separate experiments in the Jovian system.

On Dec7, Galileo will fire its main engines to put it into orbit around the huge planet for almost two years. Galileo will then receive data from a probe that will plunge down through Jupiter's clouds to send back information.

First data from the atmospheric probe will be radioed to Earth later in December and first pictures are expected in late spring or early summer.

The last time a spacecraft visited Jupiter was in 1979, when Voyagers I and II flew by on tours of the outer planets.

Voyager I passed within 200,000 miles (320,000 km) of one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, taking photographs revealing an ice-covered world about the size of the Earth's moon.

In contrast, Galileo is scheduled to come as close as 431 miles above Europa's surface in December of 1996 and its high-resolution cameras will be able to make out surface features about the size of a high-rise building.