Galileo (NCC-1701/1)

The Galileo (NCC-1701/1) was a Federation class F shuttlecraft in service to Starfleet in the 23rd century. The shuttle was assigned to the Federation starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) in the 2260s.

This vessel had shields and was armed with low-yield missiles. It also was fitted with a teleprobe rocket, a small atmospheric probe fitted with a camera and able to transmit telemetry. 

Service history
In 2267, a survey team consisting of Lt. Calder, James T. Kirk, Spock, and two security officers landed on the surface of Tactis II. Galileo was dragged along by a lava flow, which only scorched its paint. Shortly afterward, a mysterious non-humanoid Tactisian lifeform duplicated the shuttle and both security officers, who then piloted the duplicate into the mouth of a volcano. The original Galileo and its crew safely returned to the Enterprise. 

At some point during the 2260s, an astral storm transported the Enterprise back to the 16th century via a time warp. Kirk, Spock, Joe Wells and crewman Sankey traveled aboard the Galileo to search for intelligent life on the nearby planet. The ship banked to evade enormous giant ants. The shuttle team eventually discovered, the last surviving Zeltok. When his home was attacked by an army of the ants, Galileo fired low-yield missiles to knock out some of them, but the battle was hopeless and Karn refused to be rescued. Galileo returned to the Enterprise just as the storm hit again and returned everyone to the 23rd century. 

Galileo also participated in an armed aerial battle with Tondusian strike craft along with three other shuttles. Commanded by Montgomery Scott aboard the Galileo, their mission was to rescue Kirk, Spock, Hikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekov, who had been captured on Tondus by Romulans. During the battle, one of the shuttles was hit and plummeted downward in flames. The other three got through, however, and successfully rescued the landing party. They also destroyed an invasion fleet primed for the Federation. 


 * The other three shuttles were all depicted with Galileo NCC-1701/7 markings. The story did not identify which shuttle was hit during the battle, except that it was not Scott's ship.

In the 2260s, captured renegade exile killed three crewmen in the shuttle bay and fled the Enterprise aboard shuttle NCC-1701/5. Kirk and Spock boarded Galileo, pursuing the rebel to his moon base Zettin with a task force that included NCC-1701/3 and an unspecified shuttle, all equipped with defensive force fields and missiles. Zar's reactivated robot army on Zettin fired at the shuttles with overwhelming firepower. Kirk launched missiles that were immediately detonated by the robot's attack — making the shuttles appear to have been destroyed, in order to retreat and reconnoiter. Kirk launched the shuttle's teleprobe rocket to gather telemetry on Zar's base. The three ships then resumed their attack in formation, successfully destroying Zar's bunker. 

Kirk, Spock and Leonard McCoy landed Galileo onto the hangar deck of a mysterious space station shaped like a coffin. It was covered with a strange, hypnotic red moss that produced illusions of floating skulls and large monsters. The station's control room beamed the three officers via a long distance transporter to a Rome-like planet. The Enterprise was eventually able to transport the landing party back to the ship, but the space station itself vanished without a trace, taking the shuttle along with it.