Galileo spacecraft set to have a head-on with Jupiter
NASA plans to crash its Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter next week to avoid contaminating the red planet's ice-covered moon Europa with bacteria from earth. The aging probe will plunge into the planet's stormy atmosphere at a speed of nearly 174,000kph, vaporising the nearly 1350kg Galileo and any microbes that may have been stowaways on the spacecraft since its 1989 launch
Europa, a planet-sized moon, is widely believed to have the most promising habitat for extraterrestrial life within the solar system.
Were earth bugs to gain a toehold on Europa, perhaps in pools of water warmed by radioactive plutonium the spacecraft uses to generate electricity, they could compromise future attempts to probe the moon for indigenous life.
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