Spirits of Galileo & Magellan raised to new heights

NASA Kennedy Space Center 20 ton Crane for Galileo Satelite

Raising the spirits of exploration pioneers Galileo & Magellan at Kennedy Space Center required a very special 20 ton overhead bridge crane with multiple free-fall overspeed failsafe controls incorporated into the design. The Galileo-to-Jupiter satellite project was an ambitious project incorporating scientists from 6 countries and our 20 ton crane was utilized to assist in the building of the Space Center’s Galileo satellite, which resulted in our company being named Kennedy Space Center’s Small Business Contractor of the Year.

The project was a fast-track design and build, including full load free-fall testing on a complete structural runway built prior to shipment. Rose-Hulman professor Irv Hooper’s detailed inertia calculations and Carl Norris’s structural creativity proved invaluable, all due to the rush to get Galileo on an upcoming space shuttle launch but the Challenger explosion ended up pushing Galileo back several years.  Galileo was finally launched on Atlantis, STS-34, taking 6 years to get to Jupiter, travelling nearly 3 Billion miles total, then was purposely destroyed into Jupiters’ atmosphere in 2003 after completing multiple scientific missions.

Our crane was then used to build NASA’s satellite Magellan which was built to map Venus.  Magellan was also deployed on an Atlantis Shuttle.  

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