Galileo Jupiter orbit

Fig. 1. A schematic diagram of the orbital positions of the moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo. Their positions are scaled to Jupiter s radius (Rj) with properties given in Table 1. Note these satellites, like our moon, are all phase locked to the parent planet, hence the same side faces Jupiter throughout each moon s orbit. Since the magnetic field is attached to Jupiter, it rotates faster, therefore, in addition to ions and electrons moving up and down the field lines and impacting the satellites, there is a net preferential flow onto the hemisphere trailing the satellite s motion.

Meanwhile, Galileo continued falling toward Jupiter until it was captured by the planet s gravitational field and attained orbit on... 

Amalthea is one of the four small moons inside the orbit of lo. Galileo visited it during its last orbit before falling into the Jovian atmosphere. Source Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "Galileo Mission to Jupiter/ online at http // www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact sheets/galileo.pdf... 

The geocentric Ptolemaic system was superseded by the heliocentric system of Copernicus (1473-1543) principally owing to the work of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton in the seventeenth century. The planets are now known to revolve about the sun in elliptical orbits of small eccentricity at the following mean distances (in millions of miles)—Mercury, 36 . Venus, 67-2 Earth, 92-9 Mars, 141 5 Jupiter, 483 3 Saturn, 886 1 Uranus, 1783 Neptune, 2793 Pluto, 3666. 

Galileo applied the recent discovery of the telescope perfected by himself to astronomy, and in this way revealed new heavens to the eyes of man. The spots that he observed on the surface of the sun enabled him to discover rotation and he determined the time and the laws of this. He demonstrated the phases of Venus and discovered the four moons that surround Jupiter and accompany it in its vast orbit. He learnt how to measure time exactly by means of the oscillations of a pendulum. 

The Galileo mission to Jupiter and beyond obtained nearly 5 of the required 9 kilometers per second delta-v from one flyby of Venus and two flybys of Earth. This is only slighdy higher than the delta-v required to reach lunar orbit. 

The Galileo spacecraft was launched in October 1989 it arrived at Jupiter in 1995 on September 21,2003, the mission was terminated by sending the orbiter into Jupiter s atmosphere at a speed of nearly 50 km/s to avoid any chance of it contaminating local moons with bacteria from Earth. 

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