September 06, 2003

JUPITER MAIS PERTO
A missão da sonda Galileo da NASA promete bons avanços para a ciência. Vale a pena ler o relato que vem na New Yorker. Citação: The orbiter also conducted forty flybys of planets and moons, far more than any other spacecraft. It was the first to swing close to an asteroid; the first to orbit one of the outer planets; the first to document fire fountains erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io; and the first to fly through a plume from Io, a lurid yellow-orange sphere with an estimated three hundred volcanoes erupting at any given time. In July, 1994, Galileo provided direct observation of fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet slamming into Jupiter; these collisions produced explosions more powerful than that of the largest H-bomb.