Related Web sitesGoodbye Galileo - http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu/~loretta/solarsystem/PIRL's Galileo Site - http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/missions/Galileo/Galileo Mission - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/Solar System Ambassadors - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ambassador/---------------------------------------------------------------Newswise — The Galileo spacecraft that has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995 is intentionally scheduled to plunge into the jovian atmosphere on Sunday, Sept. 21.
More than 200 "Solar System Ambassadors" around the country that day are hosting"Goodbye, Galileo" events to celebrate the space mission, which has produced an impressive list of scientific "firsts" and discoveries.
Many University of Arizona and Arizona State University planetary scientists have been directly involved with this historic mission to Jupiter. Some of the UA scientists will be featured in the "Goodbye, Galileo" program that starts at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 21, at the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) in Tucson.
The event, free and open to the public, will be held in the Kuiper Space Sciences Building, 3rd Floor Atrium and Room 308, 1629 E. University Blvd, on the UA main campus. Public parking (free on Sundays) is available in spaces near the Kuiper Space Sciences Building and at the Cherry Street and Second Street parking garages.
"The Galileo mission to Jupiter has been a fantastic success," said Loretta McKibben of LPL, who is one of the volunteer NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Solar System Ambassadors. "Galileo has discovered a possible ocean under (the jovian moon) Europa's frozen crust, studied the sulphurous volcanoes on the moon Io, obtained the first close-up images of asteroids in our solar system, and directly sampled and analyzed the composition of Jupiter's atmosphere."
The public is welcome to pick up free educational handouts on the Galileo mission, ask volunteers questions, and peruse Galileo displays courtesy of UA's Planetary Image Research Laboratory (PIRL). Talks begin at 3:45 in Room 308. Interpreters will be provided by the UA's Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Featured speakers are:
* Professor Alfred McEwen, director of the Planetary Image Research Laboratory (PIRL) in LPL, who will speak about his work on the Galileo mission. McEwen is a member of the imaging science teams of the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the NASA Cassini mission to Saturn, participating scientist on Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, and principal investigator (PI) of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. For Galileo, McEwen led the sequence planning and science analysis for Io, Jupiter's volcanically active moon and the Galilean satellite nearest to Jupiter.
* Elizabeth Turtle, research scientist at LPL and the Planetary Science Institute, who will talk about her work on Europa, the jovian moon which may have an ocean under its icy crust. Turtle1s research topics include understanding the formation and evolution of mountains on Io (Jupiter's volcanic moon), planning imaging observations of Io by Galileo, and the study of the surface and subsurface of Europa, as well as studies of the geology of Mars. She is currently involved with planning imaging observations of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft and probe, which are en route to Saturn and will arrive next July.
* Heather Enos, project manager for the Gamma Ray Spectrometer on the Mars 2001 Odyssey mission, and project manager for the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) instrument (one of the science instruments for the recently-announced Phoenix Mars lander), will serve as master of ceremonies. Enos is an LPL administrator and the head of outreach activities for the Mars Odyssey orbiter mission's Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, which has provided groundbreaking evidence for frozen water in the soil of Mars.
More about Tucson's Goodbye Galileo event is available online at http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu/~loretta/solarsystem/. PIRL's Galileo Website is http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/missions/Galileo/. For more information on the Galileo mission, see the main NASA Galileo web site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/.
The NASA-JPL Solar System Ambassadors Program is a public outreach program designed to work with motivated volunteers across the nation. These volunteers communicate the excitement of JPL's space exploration missions and information about recent discoveries to people in their local communities. For more information, see the JPL Web site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ambassador/.
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