What was Galileo's atmospheric entry probe called?

Galileo's atmospheric entry probe was called the Galileo Probe. It was the entry component of NASA's Galileo mission, which also included an orbiter designed to study Jupiter and its moons.

The probe entered Jupiter's atmosphere on December 7, 1995, after separating from the orbiter. It was the first spacecraft to make direct measurements inside Jupiter's atmosphere, recording temperature, pressure, wind, cloud structure, and atmospheric composition as it descended beneath the cloud tops.

Its journey was extraordinarily violent: it entered at roughly 48 kilometers per second and endured peak deceleration of about 228 times Earth's gravity. A carbon-phenolic ablative heat shield protected it during entry, while a parachute slowed the descent for scientific measurements. The probe transmitted data to the Galileo orbiter, which relayed it to Earth.

A common mix-up is confusing the Galileo Probe with the Galileo spacecraft as a whole. The spacecraft was the complete orbiter-and-probe mission; “Jupiter Entry Probe,” or JEP, was another name used for the atmospheric vehicle. The probe stopped transmitting after descending into increasingly hot, dense layers.