Silenced in 58 Minutes — The Only Probe Ever Parachuted Into Jupiter

...In 1995 a small probe parachuted into Jupiter and talked for 58 minutes — still the only measurements ever made below the clouds of a giant planet. On December 7, 1995, Galileo's probe plunged into Jupiter after a six-year detour forced by a cancelled upper stage, a main antenna that never fully opened, and a tape recorder that nearly failed weeks before arrival. It endured the most severe atmospheric entry ever flown, burning away nearly a quarter of its mass, then transmitted 58 minutes of data from a planet with no solid surface. What it found did not match expectations: no three-layer clouds, about ten times less water than expected, winds near 180 m/s that held steady as deep as it could measure, and less helium and neon than in the Sun. The reason, discovered later, was luck of the worst kind — the probe had fallen into a rare hot, dry spot nicknamed the Sahara of Jupiter. In 2020, Juno measured more water at the equator than the probe had found — the dry patch was weather, not the whole planet. Keywords: Galileo probe, Jupiter atmosphere, NASA Galileo mission, Jupiter entry probe, Sahara of Jupiter, Juno water Jupiter, Jupiter atmospheric entry, 1995 Jupiter probe CHAPTERS 0:00 A Planet With No Floor 2:36 The Long Way Around 4:16 Eighteen Ribs 6:12 Five Months Falling 7:57 The Hardest Entry 9:34 Fifty-Eight Minutes 11:57 The Sahara of Jupiter 14:07 The Second Fall CREDITS • NASA/ARC — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/A... • NASA/JPL / Amy Simon Cornell U., Reta Beebe NMSU, Heidi Hammel Space Science Institute, MIT — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL-Caltech — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JSC — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/S... • NASA/KSC — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/8... • NASA/JPL/USGS — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL / JPL/NASA/STScI — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL / Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA/NASA and Amy Simon Cornell U.. — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/ New Mexico State Univ. — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/JHUAPL — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/JunoCam — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL / Infrared Telescope Facility: NASA/Infrared Telescope Facility/University of Hawaii/G. S. Orton (JPL), JunoCam image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin Gill © CC BY / Tom Momary © CC BY — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA-JPL/SwRI/Univ. Leicester — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL-Caltech/LMSS — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Christopher Go — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... • NASA/JPL / Gemini Image: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), JunoCam image: ENASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Brian Swift © CC BY / Tom Momary © CC BY — us-gov-105 http://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/P... Narration is produced with a synthetic voice. NASA does not endorse this channel....