It is my understanding that this evening's edition of "Nightline" on ABC will
be devoted to the rich history of discovery that was the legacy of the
Galileo spacecraft. Galileo's mission was terminated this last Sunday. If so, the
show is undoubtedly worth watching.

There have been other voyages of discovery of course, but few can match the
depth of information uncovered by the Galileo spacecraft during its 14-year
mission. The last person to "discover" an ocean was Balboa, 500 years ago, but it
was of course only a discovery in the sense that Europeans didn't know of it
existence.

In the case of Galileo, we discovered an ocean on Europa that no one knew
existed -- and that ocean has been elevated to the likely most probable harbor of
independently originated life in this solar system. It is because of that
likelihood that the decision was made to crash Galileo into the clouds of Jupiter
simply to insure that the spacecraft would never land on the surface of
Europe. Although planetary protection protocols were in place when Galileo was
launched, they weren't nearly as severe as they would be today, knowing what we
know now. Earthly bacteria could possibly have survived in Galileo and possibly
could contaminate Europa.

Bill O'Neil, the project director of Galileo, said recently, "Galileo Galilei
only got house arrest by his sponsor the Roman Catholic Church for
discovering things that they didn't want to be true, whereas our Project Galileo gets
the death sentence from NASA for its greatest discovery: the prospect of life on
Europa."

Wirt Atmar

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