Galileo

Scientists have completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere where its signature colorful striped clouds form.

Built in 1961, the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is the cradle of robotic space exploration.

Scientists have discovered that the yellow color seen on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa is actually sodium chloride, a compound known on Earth as table salt.

New comprehensive mapping of the radiation pummeling Jupiter’s icy moon Europa reveals where scientists should look -- and how deep they’ll have to go -- when searching for signs of habitability and biosignatures.

Though once big enough to swallow three Earths with room to spare, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been shrinking for a century and a half.

Exploration Stories: Favorite Historical Moments - Robert Pappalardo Interview

The Planetary Science Division's missions have revolutionized our understanding of the origin and evolution of the solar system.

Galileo sparked the birth of modern astronomy with his observations of the Moon, phases of Venus, moons around Jupiter, sunspots, and the news that seemingly countless individual stars make up the Milky Way Galaxy.

Europa, Jupiter's smallest moon, might not only sustain but foster life according to the research of a University of Arizona professor.

A recent image from NASA's Galileo spacecraft adds evidence to a theory that Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter's four large moons, may hold an underground ocean.

San Andreas-like faults in the crust of Jupiter's icy moon Europa provide evidence that the crust, floating on a liquid water ocean, has slipped over the globe, so that the poles recently have wandered hundreds of miles, a University of Arizona undergraduate student reported today.

Impact craters on Europa - the jovian satellite that scientists say may hide a subsurface liquid ocean - show that the moon's brittle ice shell crust is more than 3 to 4 kilometers (1.8 to 2.4 miles) thick, two University of Arizona planetary scientists report in Science (Nov. 9 issue).

Reflectance spectra from Galileo's near-infrared mapping spectrometer (NIMS) suggests that the surface of Ganymede, the largest satellite of Jupiter, contains hydrated materials.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft has successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter's moon Callisto, closer than any of the spacecraft's 30 previous flybys of Jovian moons.

Add Jupiter's moon Ganymede, which is bigger than two of the solar system's nine planets, to the growing list of worlds with evidence of liquid water under the surface.

For many UK planetary scientists, the end of the year and the start of the next millennium will be marked not only by the usual seasonal celebrations but also by a unique feast of data from two NASA space missions.

Two NASA spacecraft are teaming up to scrutinize Jupiter during the next few months to gain a better understanding of the planet's stormy atmosphere, diverse moons, faint rings and vast bubble of electrically charged gas.

NASA researchers have the strongest evidence yet that one of Jupiter's most mysterious moons hides an ocean of water underneath its icy coat.

Using data from the Galileo spacecraft currently in orbit around Jupiter, scientists have discovered that thunderstorms beneath the upper cloud cover are supplying energy to the planet's colorful large-scale weather patterns - including the 300-year-old Great Red Spot.

If alien creatures exist elsewhere in our solar system, they're most likely to be found on Europa, one of 16 moons orbiting Jupiter.

When NASA's Galileo spacecraft swooped past Jupiter's moon Europa a week ago, it picked up powerful new evidence that a liquid ocean lies beneath Europa's icy crust.

Hydrogen peroxide - the chemical that can turn a brunette into an instant blonde - appears on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, according to a new discovery by NASA's Galileo spacecraft reported in the March 26 edition of the journal Science.

Jupiter's second largest moon, Callisto, may have a liquid ocean tucked under its icy, cratered crust, according to scientists studying data gathered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

Jupiter's intricate, swirling ring system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's four small inner moons, according to scientists studying data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

New data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft have prompted scientists to modify their concept of the interior structure of Jupiter's moon, Callisto, and suggest that Callisto has evolved differently than the other largest Jovian moons -- Io, Ganymede and Europa.