Galileo Status Report - June 21, 1996
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
The spacecraft will fly just 844 kilometers (524 miles) above Ganymede's surface at 2:29 a.m. EDT on June 27, 1996 (11:29 p.m. on June 26 PDT). One-way light time from the spacecraft to Earth at that time will be 35 minutes, so the spacecraft's signal showing that the closest approach has occurred will be received on Earth at 3:04 a.m. EDT or 12:04 a.m. PDT June 27th.
Part 1 of the Ganymede encounter computer command sequence is onboard the spacecraft and begins execution Sunday, June 23.
The spacecraft team reports that the spacecraft tape recorder underwent pre-encounter conditioning as planned this morning and appears ready for recording data during the Ganymede encounter period.
The last pre-encounter orbit trim maneuver to fine-tune the Ganymede flyby trajectory will be executed by the spacecraft mid-day Monday, June 24.
Galileo is now 5.4 million kilometers (3.4 million miles) from Ganymede, and 630 million kilometers (391 million miles) from Earth. One-way communication time is about 36 minutes. Galileo's speed in orbit around Jupiter is 6.6 kilometers per second, about 14,800 miles per hour.