00:00On this day in space.
00:03In 1990, NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew by Earth on its way to Jupiter.
00:08Galileo was the first spacecraft to study Jupiter and its moons for an extended period of time,
00:13and it actually flew by Earth twice on the way there to pick up speed.
00:16The second flyby happened two years later, also on December 8th.
00:20Five years after its launch, on December 7th, 1995, Galileo arrived at Jupiter.
00:25It orbited Jupiter for eight years before NASA sent it on a crash course into the planet's atmosphere.
00:30NASA intentionally destroyed Galileo that way,
00:33so that it wouldn't run the risk of contaminating any of Jupiter's moons with bacteria from Earth.
00:37And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:40NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
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