00:00 On this day in space.
00:03 In 2003, NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons came to an end.
00:08 After 14 years of exploration, the Galileo spacecraft intentionally fell into Jupiter and disintegrated in the planet's dense atmosphere.
00:15 Galileo launched in 1989 from the payload bay of the space shuttle Atlantis, and it arrived in Jupiter in 1995.
00:21 It was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and the first to send a probe into its atmosphere.
00:26 It discovered evidence of salt water below the surfaces of three of Jupiter's moons, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
00:33 It was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter because it was running low on fuel,
00:37 and NASA wanted to make sure that it wouldn't impact any of Jupiter's moons that could harbor life in their subsurface oceans.
00:42 And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:45 [ music ]
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