The European Union on Wednesday launched the first satellite in its Galileo navigation program, aimed at reducing its reliance on the U.S. Global Positioning System.

Galileo made 12 close flybys of Europa and detected disruptions in Jupiter's magnetic field around the moon that also could be interpreted as evidence of a global sub-surface sea of salty water.

Jupiter’s moon Europa, in images taken by NASA's Galileo probe. The photo on the left traces the location of erupting plumes observed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2014 and 2016 (inside ...

At the time of the 1997 flyby, about 124 miles (200 kilometers) above Europa’s surface, the Galileo team didn’t suspect the spacecraft might be grazing a plume erupting from the icy moon.

This was also Galileo's closest approach to Europa, when it came to within 206km and flew near the Pwyll Crater region. During this pass, the spacecraft's magnetometer measured significant changes ...

The Galileo system launched in 2016, and has been in initial testing phases since. It represents an $11 billion investment by the EU, with the goal of becoming an alternative to navigation options ...

In March and September of 1998, the Galileo spacecraft that studied Jupiter and its moons, captured images of Europa in a flyby. Now, in 2020, a new look at the photos, in preparation for NASA’s ...

Galileo, the EU's global navigation satellite system, has been down for four days, since July 11, following a mysterious outage. All Galileo satellites are still non-operational, at the time of ...

"Eight minutes later, the orbiter started receiving data from the descent probe, which slammed into the top of the Jovian atmosphere at a comet-like speed of 170,000 kilometers per hour," NASA ...

NASA's Galileo mission, which launched in 1989, offers some of the "best evidence" of an ocean on Europa, NASA said. The Galileo spacecraft detected a magnetic field that scientists believe could ...