AM - Monday, 22 September , 2003 08:00:00
Reporter: Ben Knight
LINDA MOTTRAM: It has beamed some remarkable images back from out there in space, but as of this morning, there will be no more sounds like this from the veteran space probe Galileo.
(sound of radio waves from one of Jupiter's moons)
The sound of radio waves from one of the moons of Jupiter, sent back to Earth by Galileo, which has this morning made, as predicted, a fiery dive to its final resting place on the surface of the planet it's been orbiting for eight years – Jupiter.
Galileo's was a 14-year mission in total, six years longer than expected, giving scientists four times as much information, by one official's estimate, as might reasonably have been expected.
Among its stellar achievements, flybys of Venus, the Earth and our moon delivering what NASA says were unprecedented observations. There were also equally important excursions out into the asteroid belt, and the only direct view of the impact on Jupiter of fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Then there was the extensive study of Jupiter itself.
This morning, Australian time, Galileo has been celebrated here on Earth by the thousand -or-so scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
But achieving celebrity status for the intrepid explorer wasn't easy, after a decade of delay in the initial launch, and then its main antenna failure once it was in space. But, once it was up and running, the science world agreed that it was worth it and one Melbourne mathematician was particularly pleased, because for decades, Doctor Andrew Prentice's theories were widely dismissed by his peers, until Galileo proved him right.
Ben Knight reports.
BEN KNIGHT: Galileo very nearly didn't happen. It was supposed to be launched on a space shuttle in 1982, but various technical problems and the setback of the Challenger explosion meant it was 10 years late arriving at Jupiter.
And even when it was on its way, its main antenna failed to deploy. Eventually, after some brilliant work by programmers at NASA, it did make a connection with Earth, but at a fraction of the power it was planned to have.
But that almost didn't matter because when Galileo did start sending back pictures and readings of Jupiter and its moons, it was breathtaking stuff. It showed ice on their surface, and even evidence of a liquid ocean on Europa.
Dr Andrew Prentice is a Monash University mathematician who was closely involved with the mission.
ANDREW PRENTICE: Really, the Galileo mission has proven beyond shadow of doubt that here, within our own solar system, we've got another miniature planetary system, and by extension it must be, therefore, that right throughout the cosmos there must be myriads of other planetary systems just like ours. So I think what this mission has proved is we are not alone.
BEN KNIGHT: But for Andrew Prentice, the Galileo project was much more personal.
Twenty years earlier, he began developing theories about Jupiter and its moons that were widely dismissed by his peers.
It was Galileo that gave him the chance to put them to the test.
ANDREW PRENTICE: No-one knew exactly how big they were, or at least how massive they were, and they didn't really know what was inside them, and yet according to my theory of the solar system, I could see that the Galilean family of moons was like a miniature planetary system which should have formed in the same way as the planets around the sun. So this gave me an opportunity to test my theory of the formation of the solar system.
BEN KNIGHT: Five of Prentice's predictions about how the moons were formed, and what they were made of have been confirmed since Galileo began sending data back to Earth, most recently last year.
Tim Thwaites, who writes for New Scientist magazine, has been following Andrew Prentice's progress for almost 20 years.
TIM THWAITES: Andrew's been portrayed for more than 20 years as the little Aussie battler against the sort of establishment science and he's been shown to be correct more often than not.
BEN KNIGHT: Galileo the spacecraft is now gone. Andrew Prentice says he's sad to see it go, but also that he has a certain empathy with the man the project was named for.
ANDREW PRENTICE: I've had a lot of setbacks, and I can assure you I do get dispirited at times and wonder whether it's worth it, you know, if you have a paper turned down many times. But I think in the long-term, the fact that I did seize this opportunity to test the model, and it has, it does seem to have worked out well for me, is something I feel not only proud of myself, but I feel from the point of view of Australian science it's nice to think that we are able to contribute just as well as any of the others.
I think it's, in the long-term, it is a wonderful sort of cosmos out there and we're very lucky to be able to be in a position to observe it, and even more so to be in a country like Australia, where we have the privilege of being able to engage in endeavours like this.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Dr Andrew Prentice is the Monash University mathematician who was closely involved with the Galileo project. Ben Knight our reporter there.