Two November Fifths

Eleven years apart on the same date, one spacecraft made its last close pass and another set out for Mars.

A Last Close Pass

Stardate 2186.2459 (NOVEMBER 5, 2002)

On this day in 2002, the aging Galileo spacecraft slipped past Jupiter's small inner moon Amalthea at about 160 kilometers. It was the first visit any craft had made to that moon, and the deepest plunge Galileo would take into the planet's fierce radiation belts.

The flyby was the mission's last. Propellant was nearly gone, and the path had already been set for a deliberate end in Jupiter's atmosphere the following year. Instruments still gathered what they could of dust, fields, and the moon's faint gravitational tug before radiation pushed the spacecraft into safe mode. A quiet close, after years of looking.

Toward a Distant Red Shore

Stardate 2764.8548 (NOVEMBER 5, 2013)

On 5 November 2013, a PSLV-XL rose from Sriharikota and placed India's Mars Orbiter Mission into Earth orbit. It was the country's first interplanetary spacecraft, a modest craft sent on a long, careful path toward the Red Planet.

The launch itself was only the beginning. Over the following weeks the orbit would be raised, then the craft would leave Earth's influence and coast for most of a year. What mattered on this morning was the precision of the departure, and the quiet confidence of a first attempt.