Galileo (spacecraft) - Spacecraft

Spacecraft

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory built the Galileo spacecraft and managed the Galileo mission for NASA. Germany supplied the propulsion module. NASA's Ames Research Center managed the probe, which was built by Hughes Aircraft Company.

At launch, the orbiter and probe together had a mass of 2,564 kilograms (5,653 pounds) and stood seven metres tall. One section of the spacecraft rotated at 3 rpm, keeping Galileo stable and holding six instruments that gathered data from many different directions, including the fields and particles instruments. The other section of the spacecraft was an antenna, and data were periodically transmitted to it. Back on the ground, the mission operations team used software containing 650,000 lines of programming code in the orbit sequence design process; 1,615,000 lines in the telemetry interpretation; and 550,000 lines of code in navigation.

Read more about this topic:  Galileo (spacecraft)