Bye bye Galileo. We'll miss you.

From launch to impact, the stalwart spacecraft has travelled 4,631,778,000 kilometers (2,878,053,500 miles) on 925 kilograms of propellant (246 gallons), not counting the fuel for the shuttle. In all that time, and across all those miles, Galileo has returned over 30 gigabytes of data, including 14,000 pictures.

One chapter of the volumes of scientific data produced by Galileo over the years includes the discovery of likely sub-surface water oceans on the icy satellite Europa. This has fueled speculation about the possibility of life existing in that environment, and is prompting plans for future spacecraft to return to Europa to search for life. Since the Galileo spacecraft was never designed to specifically search for life, it was never subjected to the rigorous sterilization procedures such as those mandated for craft going to Mars. To prevent any possible future biological contamination of Europa, the decision was made to provide a final resting place for the Galileo Orbiter that guarantees the spacecraft will never collide with any of the Jovian moons. That resting place is Jupiter itself.

http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/thiswk/today030921.html