It's the fastest spacecraft ever launched. It will get to the Moon in nine hours?it will get to Jupiter in one year and nine months.

Galileo is one of the most successful outer worlds missions that the Earth has ever launched. This spacecraft has given us some unbelievable discoveries.

All our sweetest hours fly fastest.

This is a great milestone to have accomplished, but it's just one of many milestones before we can open the champagne. Once we are in the prime science orbit, the spacecraft will perform observations of the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface of Mars in unprecedented detail.

We had a very gut-wrenching decision. We thought at the time that there was too much risk to go forward.

What we had here was a very gut-wrenching decision and significant management and technical hurdles to overcome, and we're happy to be going forward.