Now, this story comes from a site called, “Enterprise Mission.” Something about that name discredits it just about right away.
I found it fascinating, however. Apparently by plunging Galileo into Jupiter to avoid causing damage, NASA managed to ignite the Plutonium 238 fuel and create a nuclear explosion.
The article argues that this explosion atomized some of the atmospheric contaminants including carbon, which formed elementary carbon creating a dark soot spot on Jupiter that had not been there before.
There’s even a little intrigue because it’s all supposedly only documented by the hobbyist community. That seems a little shady to me as well. I think I’ll look into the details if I have the time but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.
Original Story: http://www.enterprisemission.com/NukingJupiter.html
Galileo Info.: http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/
Um…i thought the satellite was sent into space….past Pluto…wow….
I believe that was the Pioneer or some such thing. I forget right now as I’m not really much of a space geek.
If you look at the Galileo link at NASA you’ll see it did in fact plunge into Jupiter’s atomosphere.
Actually no: even I’m wrong (and there’s no surprise there).
It seems the sattelites who share a name with a Star Trek series were the deep space explorers.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?Sort=Target&Target=Beyond&Era=Present