"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 also explained that the spacecraft was slowly tumbling, ... Galileo to ACS3: How NASA’s solar sails could change future space travel. An image captured by the LightSail 2 spacecraft.

NASA's Galileo mission, which launched into space in 1989, was designed to study Jupiter, its moons, and its surrounding invisible magnetic bubble, called the magnetosphere.

On November 5, 2002, NASA's old Galileo spacecraft was almost out of fuel. But the Jupiter mission still had some science to do. ‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com Galileo flew ...

John R. Casani, a longtime Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, project manager and researcher, died at the age of 92 last week. Casani served a central role in many of NASA’s historic deep ...

NASA has launched its Europa Clipper mission to the icy moon of Jupiter. Thought to contain an underground ocean and potentially habitable environment, Europa has long been a tantalizing target.

While NASA spacecraft have been busy studying asteroids, ... However, it was the imaging conducted in the 1990s during the Galileo mission that provided the most data on Europa to date.

Then, in the 1990s, NASA's Galileo mission captured legendary views of Europa's chaotic, ridged surface — suggesting there was water near the top. What's more, the spacecraft detected a strong ...

NASA's Galileo spacecraft zoomed by Europa a dozen times, but it carried scientific instruments from the 1980s. Europa Clipper boasts a 21st-century payload package with nine instruments to probe ...

Discovered in 1610 by Galileo, Europa has been studied by NASA's Voyager probes and, much more extensively, by the agency's aptly-named Galileo orbiter in the 1990s, which made a dozen close flybys.

NASA's mission to send a spacecraft to scour Jupiter's moon Europa for signs of life appears back on ... Galileo's imaging revealed reddish-brown cracks slicing the surface that scientists hope to ...

The spacecraft is due to launch on Thursday, but won't reach Jupiter's orbit until 2030. If there's "even a hint that the stuff of life exists" on Europa, a separate surface lander would then be ...