The first chapter reviews the precursor flyby missions of Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2. Then it provides an overview of the tortuous route taken by the Galileo mission from conception in 1976 (as the Jupiter Orbiter Probe) to its launch from the space shuttle Atlantis in October 1989. This path included a few false starts, near-cancellation, problems with one of its rockets, the Challenger disaster (Galileo was scheduled for the next launch), and courtroom challenges over the launch of the plutonium used by the spacecraft for power.
The journey to Jupiter was nearly as complex as the pre-launch gyrations, with the Galileo spacecraft sent careening like a pinball for six years around the solar system, using several gravity assists from Venus and Earth in order to save enough fuel to accomplish its mission. Chapter 2 focuses on the discoveries made along the way, including an experiment to detect life on Earth led by Carl Sagan, the first asteroid flybys (of Gaspra and Ida), and the only direct look at the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter. Also recounted is the sad failure of the high-gain antenna.
Chapter 3 recaps the last four centuries of Jupiter research, then covers Galileo's descent into one of the driest regions on its destination planet.
The real meat of the book, however, is in Chapter 4, which covers the main results of research into the atmospheres of Jupiter and four of its moons, first glimpsed by the orbiter's namesake, the great Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.
Particular attention is paid to Europa, the moon of most interest to astrobiologists, since a global ocean might lie beneath its icy crust. Throughout this chapter, progress reports update the original edition with the latest news.
The book ends with a look to the future. After sustaining crippling doses of radiation from Jupiter's giant Van Allen belts, Galileo will be deliberately crashed into the planet in the summer of 2003.
Future missions may include an Orbiter mission to Europa or even submarines to explore alien oceans. However, apart from Cassini, none are likely to be as grand in scope as Galileo. Fischer's book provides a fitting tribute to one of NASA's greatest accomplishments.
-- Randy Gladstone; Astronomy, Nov 2002, Vol. 30, Issue 11
Other reviews
Nearly out of thruster fuel, the spectacularly successful Galileo spacecraft is currently making its final laps of the Jovian system, so Fischer's stocktaking is timely. A star-crossed craft, Galileo has encountered numerous technical problems, especially the failure of its main antenna to unfold, that followers of solar system exploration all know about but which Fischer usefully recounts for noncognoscenti. The antenna crisis spelled disaster until engineers devised ways to send Galileo's data through a weaker backup antenna, resulting in the images adorning Fischer's account and others. The pictures remind readers that Galileo has observed more than Jupiter and its consorts. Swinging by Venus, Earth, and two asteroids, it made new discoveries about them, too. Discoveries about Earth? Yes, indeed: Galileo's instruments detected evidence of biological activity. But the big payoff has been that of Jupiter, and Fischer excitedly describes the major revelations, the most intriguing of them being new El Dorados for volcanologists--the eruption-wracked moon Io--and for exobiologists--the glaciated moon Europa, with its putative subsurface ocean.
--Gilbert Taylor ; Booklist
As the award-winning editor of a German astronomy journal, Fischer (Hubble Revisited: New Images from the Discovery Machine; etc.) possesses the expertise needed for an overview of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons, though because the mission is still underway, it is too soon yet for a definitive summing up. NASA has reserved its rights to the story, with publication expected sometime in 2003. In the meantime, Fischer's readable account is one of the few book-length treatments available. To date, most of the published material on Galileo has appeared in professional and popular science journals, one recent exception being David Harland's Jupiter Odyssey, which, like Fischer's book, is published under an imprint of Springer-Verlag. Fischer, who has covered Jupiter exploration extensively in his magazine, writes for a popular audience, handily guiding the reader through the first Pioneer and Voyager probes of the 1970s, the five-year exploration of the Jovian system and the Jupiter flyby of the Cassini space probe, headed to Saturn for explorations beginning in 2004. Throughout, he provides handy summary boxes of findings and scores of illustrations including more than 40 breathtaking full-color images of Jupiter, the volcanic landscape of the moon Io and, of course, the spectacular ice crusts of Europa. As an editor working in Germany (and in German), Fischer is reporting as an outsider to the American space program, which puts him at a disadvantage. But until Galileo's mission is completed and the histories and memoirs begin pouring out of NASA, this book will serve as a much-needed addition to the popular literature.
-- Publishers Weekly