STS-34 Galileo processing at KSC’s SAEF-2 planetary spacecraft facility

At the Kennedy Space Center's (KSC's) Spacecraft and Assembly Encapsulation Facility 2 (SAEF-2), the planetary spacecraft checkout facility, clean-suited technicians work on the Galileo spacecraft prior to moving it to the Vehicle Processing Facility (VPF) for mating with the inertial upper stage (IUS). Galileo is scheduled for launch aboard Atlantis, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 104, on Space Shuttle Mission STS-34 in October 1989. It will be sent to the planet Jupiter, a journey which will taken more than six years to complete. In December 1995 as the two and one half ton spacecraft orbits Jupiter with its ten scientific instruments, a probe will be released to parachute into the Jovian atmosphere. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the Galileo project. View provided by KSC.