Amptek preamplifiers vaporized on Sunday, September 21, 2003 on board the GALILEO spacecraft as it plunged into the Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere at 2:57 p.m. EST. This sacrifice of the 3,000-pound, $1.5 billion spacecraft was purposely made by NASA in order to avoid collision with Europa and contaminate it with any Earth germs. Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is believed to sustain life.
The GALILEO spacecraft was launched in 1989 from the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It traveled 2.8 billion miles, took over 14,000 images of the Jovian system and other planets. It recorded the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter, deployed a probe to measure Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, and discovered ice cover and salt water beneath the surface of Europa.
Amptek congratulates the managers, scientists and engineers worldwide who worked on the GALILEO MISSION and is proud to have contributed our preamplifier technology to several instruments that made scientific discoveries to enrich man’s knowledge of the chemical and physical composition of Jupiter and its satellites.
Amptek preamplifiers were used in the Ultraviolet Spectrometer, Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer, and the Plasma Subsystem instruments.
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