Galileo Status Report - December 8, 1995
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
With their spacecraft on time and on target, Galileo engineers have canceled tomorrow's planned maneuver to fine-tune Galileo's orbital path around Jupiter. The achieved orbit needs no adjustment.
The reduction in spacecraft velocity from the gravity effects of yesterday's 892-kilometer (555-mile) flyby of the moon Io translates into a savings in propellant usage for the spacecraft, said Project Manager Bill O'Neil at JPL. It also means Galileo will carry out its first flyby of a jovian moon, Ganymede, on June 27, 1996, a week earlier than the July 4 flyby previously scheduled.
Transmission of data collected from Galileo's now-vaporized companion probe will begin Sunday at 4:17 a.m. PST and continue with playbacks from Galileo's onboard computer memory to the antennas of NASA's global Deep Space Network through December 13. Results of quick-look analysis of the science data received next week will be announced at a press briefing scheduled for December 19 at 10 a.m. PST at NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA.
In addition to the 40 minutes of probe data stored in Galileo's computer memory, the entire set of probe data, up to 75 minutes' worth, was recorded on Galileo's tape recorder. That information will be played back to Earth beginning in February following multiple returns of all the data stored in Galileo's computer memory.