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Galileo threads Jupiter's radiation belts for a 112-mile pass over Io
The spacecraft's instruments catch electrical currents linking the volcanic moon to Jupiter itself.
Twelve years after launching from the belly of Space Shuttle Atlantis, NASA's Galileo spacecraft was well past its planned mission life, its main camera already damaged from a close pass two months earlier. On October 15, 2001, it dove to within 112 miles of Io's south pole, the closest approach yet of its extended mission. Its remaining instruments caught something the pictures never could: dense plasma and electrical currents flowing through flux tubes tying Io directly to Jupiter's magnetic field…
