NASA's Galileo spacecraft photographed this asteroid on its way to orbit Jupiter and its moons for its mission from 1995 to 2003. The spacecraft may have died in the Jovian atmosphere but the data it sent back is still being examined and new findings are being uncovered.
Most recent is the discovery of a subsurface ocean of molten or partially molten magma beneath the surface of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io according to a new study by scientists at UCLA, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Michigan.
The voyager spacecraft project with Voyager I and II has been in operational for more than 35 years... these two vessels have left our solar system and are entering deep space...and though their primary mission eneded in the 1980's, these spacecraft are currently in extended mission status, tasked with locating and studying the boundaries of the Solar System, including the Kuiper belt, the heliosphere and interstellar space.
Do we need to do this type of science? It represents hundreds of millions of dollars per launch, billions and billions annually... should we be using our limited national resources on these types of experiments, or should we be closing down the space adventure for the sake of solving our domestic and international problems here on earth?
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