QUESTION:
What will Galileo do after the two year mission is over?

ANSWER from Eilene Theilig, Gregory Klotz and Lou D'Amario in December 1995:
There are two possibilities for what will happen to Galileo after the two 
years of our primary mission are over in December of 1997.  The first is 
that we will go into an "extended" mission and will continue observing 
Jupiter's atmosphere, magnetosphere, and moons.  For this to happen, 
the spacecraft must remain healthy with all critical parts working, 
we must have enough propellant left to control our trajectory and 
keep the communications antenna pointed at Earth, and the project 
must be funded.

If this is not possible, the spacecraft will be turned off and left in orbit
around Jupiter.

In the past, many missions have been continued after their primary 
missions have ended (e.g. the Magellan mission to Venus, which 
performed some exciting science well after its primary mission 
was over).  Maybe some excellent scientific ideas can be planned 
for Galileo at the end of 1998!

Eventually, Galileo will run out of propellant, or the electronics 
on board the spacecraft will stop functioning because of damage from 
the high radiation around Jupiter, or NASA will choose to stop funding 
the mission. But Galileo will continue to orbit Jupiter for a very 
long time after the mission ends.  Eventually, sometime between several 
hundred to a thousand years in the future (these things are very hard 
to predict), Galileo will suffer one of the following fates:
    (1) the spacecraft will impact one of Jupiter's satellites (most likely)
    (2) the spacecraft will impact Jupiter (less likely)
    (3) the spacecraft will escape Jupiter and go into solar orbit 
	(much less likely)