Rough Trip, Jubilant Arrival : Galileo mission to Jupiter is a case study in perseverance

Most of us are quickly reduced to two options if the car conks out on the daily commute: AAA or hoofing it. And if the traditional routes to a destination are unavailable, we’ll often cancel the trip. Maybe that is the proper context for noting the successful delivery of a space probe deep into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet.

At about 3:12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, the oft-maligned and incredibly resilient Galileo spacecraft began receiving transmissions from its atmospheric probe. That, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Ed Stone said moments later, almost guaranteed that its data would be successfully stored and retrieved. The frosting on the cake came later: Galileo achieved orbit around the enormous planet.

But none of this even hints at the perseverance required to get this mission from the drawing board in 1974 and off along one of the trickiest and most convoluted routes ever attempted in space exploration. The Galileo mission, approved by Congress in 1977, was to be launched from the space shuttle by May 1986. But the Challenger shuttle explosion that year delayed subsequent flights, and the more powerful rockets needed to launch Galileo were no longer allowed on shuttle missions.

That meant launching Galileo in the wrong direction in 1989, using the gravity of Venus and of the Earth to build momentum, much as a hammer thrower spins to increase the force of his toss.

Early in the long voyage, in 1991, the main data transmission antenna failed, and JPL engineers had to jury-rig a secondary system. It was 1995 before new computer software could partially make up for the main antenna loss. Then a Galileo tape recorder failed, threatening a total loss of data. That too was solved.

Have you ever wondered what it was like for the folks who brought the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft and its astronauts back to Earth? Have you wondered what it was like at Mission Control in Houston when the first person landed on the moon? Look at the faces at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and you’ll know. Galileo approaches that class of accomplishment.