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Artist's impression of Galileo's arrival at Jupiter
Artist's impression of Galileo's arrival at Jupiter

The Galileo project was an American robotic space program that studied Jupiter and its moons (including Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto), as well as several other Solar System bodies. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Galileo spacecraft consisted of an orbiter and an atmospheric entry probe. It was launched in 1989 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. Despite suffering major antenna problems, Galileo achieved the first asteroid flyby (of 951 Gaspra), discovered the first asteroid moon (Dactyl, around 243 Ida), and observed Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9's collision with Jupiter. After gravity-assisted flybys of Venus and Earth, Galileo became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. It then launched the first probe to directly measure Jupiter's atmosphere. In 2003, the mission was terminated by sending the orbiter into Jupiter's atmosphere to eliminate the possibility of contaminating the Jovian moons with terrestrial bacteria. (Full article...)

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October 18: Alaska Day (1867)

Bob Beamon
Bob Beamon
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Daron Acemoglu in 2016
Daron Acemoglu

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Ferrari FF
Ferrari FF
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Krishna's Butterball
Krishna's Butterball is a large granite balancing rock that rests on a short incline in the coastal resort town of Mamallapuram in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is approximately six metres (20 ft) high and five metres (16 ft) wide, with a mass of around 250 tonnes. It is balanced on a slope on top of a 1.2-metre-high (4 ft) plinth that is a naturally eroded hill. Krishna's Butterball is part of the Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built during the 7th and 8th centuries as Hindu religious monuments by the Pallava dynasty. It is now a popular tourist attraction.Photograph credit: Timothy A. Gonsalves