The Galileo spacecraft performed a gravity assist maneuver at Venus called VEEGA to reach Jupiter. It made many discoveries including the first observations of asteroid moon Dactyl orbiting Ida and volcanic activity on Io. Galileo found evidence for oceans on Europa and Ganymede and observed thunderstorms and lightning on Jupiter over its 7 year mission, before intentionally crashing into Jupiter in 2003 to avoid contaminating moons that could harbor life.

2. "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

3. October 18, 1989

5. Venus-Earth-Earth Gravity Assist a.k.a. “VEEGA” was a first. The mission planning guys figured out how to do that with Galileo.

7. "My car license plate says `VEEGA,' … Every morning, I go out and I see the word.” Roger Diehl Trajectory specialist

8. Venus flyby February 10, 1990

9. Goodbye Home December 11, 1990, from about 1.3 million miles away.

11. Galileo discovered Dactyl orbiting the asteroid Ida.

13. "I popped in these two wonderful 8x10’s and became the first human being to see a stereo image of an asteroid at high resolution! That entire weekend, anyone who came close to my door was dragged over: ’ Look at this!’ You know, the mailman, the babysitter. That was really a thrill." Paul Geissler Planetary geologist

14. Galileo was the first spacecraft to observe an impact into a planetary body, when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter.

15. July 22, 1994

16. First probe into a gas giant’s atmosphere

18. “ With only a week to go, I'm really excited. It's hard to sleep at night… I have to just give up … and write out what I'm thinking… Even doing that I can't always get back to sleep, but sometimes it works.” Jim Erickson November 27, 1995 Probe Release

20. “ The signal came about 6 minutes later than I had been expecting, so I was getting very fearful that something had gone wrong. When the confirmation finally came through, I was nearly in tears from the joy of knowing that we had done it!” Leslie Tamppari December 11, 1995 Probe Release

21. Galileo discovered a possible ocean on Callisto.

22. Jupiter's moon Callisto

25. Famous last words: "We will never want to do on-board management of the tape recorder..."

26. Galileo discovered that Jupiter has thunderstorms 1,000 times larger than those on Earth.

27. Water Cloud Thunderstorm Northwest of Great Red Spot

28. Galileo observes thunderheads and lightning in Jupiter's atmosphere.

29. Jupiter Lightning

30. Galileo’s Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) discovers fresh ammonia clouds on Jupiter.

31. Jupiter's multi level clouds September 5, 1996

32. NIMS looks at the Great Red Spot

33. Galileo observes volcanic activity on Io.

34. Eruption on Io June 28, 1996

35. Io Oct. 16, 2001

36. Voyager-1979 Galileo - 1997

37. "There was always something to fix. It kept me busy.'' Greg Levanas Engineer

38. Volcanic plumes on Io

39. Color Mosaic and Active Volcanic Plumes on Io November 17, 1997

41. Io's Culann-Tohil Region

42. “ New Galileo Images Hint At Wet And Wild History For Europa” NASA Press Release April 9, 1997

47. “ Solar System's Largest Moon Likely has a Hidden Ocean” NASA Press Release Ganymede December 16, 2000

48. Ganymede - Ancient Impact Craters in Galileo Regio

49. Ganymede

52. Simultaneous observation of the Jupiter system by two spacecraft (Cassini and Galileo)

53. Galileo and Cassini spacecraft in late December 2000 and early January 2001.

55. Jupiter's rings found to be composed of debris from Jupiter's small inner satellites

56. Jupiter's Inner Satellites and Rings

57. Jupiter's Inner Satellites and Ring Components

58. Jupiter's Ring System

59. Jupiter's Main Ring/Ring Halo

60. "It's not going to go on forever. Everything has to end. It's going to be a sad day though.” Andy Ingersoll Scientist

61. “ If we found life someplace else it would give us a vastly new perspective on existence. We would probably realize that we weren't quite so important as we thought we were. I mean, it might take us down a peg, which … could be useful.” Randy Tufts Former geologist at the University of Arizona (1949-2002)

62. We will be back