Galileo Probe

Let's say you want to explore your backyard to see what's there. You could walk around and look at everything, but that would take a long time and you might miss some things. So instead, you could send a little robot that can go around and take pictures and measurements for you. That's kind of like what the Galileo probe did, but instead of exploring a backyard, it explored a planet called Jupiter.

Jupiter is very, very far away from Earth, so Galileo had to travel in a spaceship for a long time to reach it. When it got there, it didn't land on Jupiter like a robot might land in your backyard. Instead, it flew around Jupiter and its four biggest moons taking measurements with special equipment.

Galileo found out a lot of things about Jupiter and its moons. For example, it discovered that Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field, and it saw that one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, had a big ocean of liquid water under its icy surface.

The Galileo probe even sent back pictures of Jupiter that helped scientists learn more about the planet's clouds and storms. So even though we can't explore Jupiter in person, Galileo helped us learn more about it from far away.