Did NASA Accidentally “Nuke” Jupiter?

On September 21, 2003 NASA deliberately directed its amazing, still-functioning Galileo spacecraft to make one final, 108,000 mph suicidal plunge into Jupiter’s vast atmosphere.

The intent of this unfortunate decision was to protect Europa, one of those Jovian moons.

Van der Worp claimed that, plunging into Jupiter’s deep and increasingly dense atmosphere, the on-board Galileo electrical power supply – a set of 144 plutonium-238 fuel pellets... would ultimately “implode”; that the plutonium Galileo carried would ultimately collapse in upon itself under the enormous pressures of Jupiter’s overwhelming atmosphere—

As the capsules continue to fall deeper through the primarily hydrogen atmosphere, the surrounding pressure/density continues to rise, to thousands of times Earth’s surface density and pressure. The capsules are now falling at a constant rate, approximately one mile per hour

At this ultra-slow “terminal velocity,” it takes the Galileo plutonium-238 capsules on the order of 700 hours – a month! to fall to a depth inside Jupiter (~700 miles below the visible clouds) where the outside pressure of the surrounding liquid hydrogen literally crushes the plutonium capsules into a supercritical state—

At this point, one of the capsules randomly implodes … and initiates, via the resulting shockwave and intense neutron shower, a runaway nuclear chain reaction in all the other surviving capsules, now spread in a spherical falling “cloud” a few tens of miles across ~700 miles below Jupiter’s visible “surface.” The resulting cascade nuclear detonation of all the surviving capsules totals several tens of kilotons ….

The deliberate destruction of Galileo to “save” Europa, and the sudden appearance of “a mysterious dark splotch” on Jupiter just one month later -- precisely time enough to get the entering plutonium down to a depth where it could catastrophically implode – is truly a remarkable “coincidence.”

Entertaining article, as you'd expect from a kook like Hoagland. Some of his other theories (cited from wikipedia):

The Face on Mars is an artificial construct
There is a Martian City at Cydonia
(Adapted with acknowledgment from Tom Van Flandern) Mars was once the moon of a larger planet, that then exploded, leaving Mars isolated.
The advanced civilisation on Mars had prior warning of the cataclysm and so escaped via migration to planet Earth, eventually adapting to the environment and becoming the present human race.
Numerous rocks surrounding the landing sites of the Mars Exploration Rovers are in fact pieces of Martian machinery.
Rocks on Mars containing biological fossils were purposely destroyed by NASA's rover.
The true color of Mars is salmon red with patches of greenish plant life and a light blue sky.
Hyperdimensional physics
The United States government has covered up the presence of extraterrestrials
The many historical failures of Mars-bound spacecraft were due to deliberate sabotage by a 'cabal' of powerful people who were desperate to conceal the 'truth' of Martian civilisation.
The Space Agency murdered the Apollo 1 astronauts
The Saturnian moon Iapetus is an artificial world.
The Galileo spacecraft, which burnt up in Jupiter's atmosphere, caused a mysterious black spot due to its nuclear payload
NASA Missions to Mars are a "well documented interest of the Bush family".
The Face on Mars is an indication of a Human/Feline hybrid design found in ancient Earth civilization, and knowledge of its existence is being suppressed by NASA.
NASA is also suppressing knowledge of an ancient civilization on the Moon. The advanced technology of this civilization is "lying around on the Moon's surface."
Additionally, that NASA denies there are large semi-transparent structures constructed of glass on the lunar surface discovered during the Apollo missions.
The Arecibo message was intentionally altered by author Carl Sagan.
The 9/11 attacks were part of a Masonic conspiracy.
Federal agencies such as FEMA, NASA, and the US government are linked to Freemasonry.
That the Old Navy Stores are tied in with secret societies and coverups. Hoagland stated this on a Coast to Coast AM show one evening.

BS, I suspect. Realistically, the pellets end up critical, not supercritical. They then slowly heat up, expand, and fall apart over the course of a few hours or days.

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