Historical Photo Of The Month - October 2004

Galileo Artwork
Photograph Number P-32904aac

In October, JPL celebrates the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Galileo spacecraft. The image above was created from a 1988 painting by freelance artist Ken Hodges. An overlay, which identified the parts of the Galileo spacecraft, was added later. For this painting, Hodges used gouache, an opaque water-based paint, on illustration board. The 15" x 19" painting is a part of the JPL Archives collection, along with several other pieces of original artwork by Hodges and other artists.

In the 1970s - 1980s, before the widespread use of computer animation, Hodges painted many different spacecraft for JPL, including Voyager and a series of proposed missions called "Purple Pigeons". The artist typically worked from blueprints, models, and photographs of the spacecraft as they were being assembled. The artwork was photographed, then used for internal presentations, publicity, and publications about the missions.

Galileo was launched aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on October 18, 1989 and deployed from the shuttle bay, to begin the six-year journey to Jupiter. For more information about Galileo or about mission artwork, contact the JPL Archives.

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