Galileo Spacecraft — Handmade Metal Display Model

The probe that spent eight years orbiting Jupiter, in hand-formed metal.

Handcrafted with Galileo's distinctive asymmetric structure: the high-gain antenna, the spun and despun sections, the instrument boom and the RTG power arms.

Details

• Handcrafted metal construction
• Antenna, boom and power arm detail
• Spun and despun section geometry
• Hand-finished surfaces
• Ready to display

The mission

Launched in 1989 and arriving at Jupiter in 1995, Galileo nearly failed before it began — its main antenna never fully unfurled, cutting the data rate to a fraction of what was planned. Engineers rewrote the onboard software from 400 million miles away to compress data hard enough to send it through the small backup antenna instead. It worked.

Galileo found evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the ice of Europa. In 2003, with fuel running out, NASA deliberately flew it into Jupiter rather than risk the derelict craft eventually contaminating that ocean with terrestrial bacteria.